How Do You Measure The Life?
by InfinitusX
Summary: Two lives measured and recorded in moments of song. A collection of music prompts ranging the genres at will. M&M. R&R.
1. i'm a boy

**How Do You Measure The Life?**

Genre: general

Pairing: M&M

Overall Warnings: boy-on-boy, language, angst, fics ranging from just about K all the way up to M.

Disclaimer: Neither the songs used for inspiration or Death Note itself are mine.

Notes: I have a fairly eclectic collection of music and I love to listen to songs while I'm writing short fic for theme/idea purposes. I also have a fairly eclectic collection of random M&M fic pieces based on said music; what you will see here are my personal favourites. All are meant to be along some line of canon or altered circumstances (no AUs here, for now), although none of them actually connect to each other. I kept them in approximate chronological order; it was the best way I could think of to organize them.

Language Notes: All of the pieces are self-beta'ed. I have a filthy mouth at times, and so I apologize in advance for any offense given. Styles and length are ranged, depending on the idea and the song.

_---_

_The Who - I'm A Boy_

Notes: The random button gave me this little gem. I know it's been done to death, but it is such fun to write nevertheless.

-

His new roommate is a cute little blond thing in an oversized black sweater and tight jeans who eyes Matt suspiciously.

Matt waves the kid towards the spare bed. "Make yourself at home. My name's Matt, by the way. I'm on the final level of this video game, so please don't interrupt me and don't feel insulted that I'm ignoring you."

The kid doesn't move, just stands in the doorway looking like they're ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

"I don't bite," Matt says finally, putting his game on pause and looking at the little blond thing curiously. "You don't have to be shy." He thinks he knows what the problem is, and smiles encouragingly. "I know it's kind of weird to room with a boy, but -"

"_Excuse_ me?!"

Matt realizes his mistake a moment too late, when the kid speaks in a surprisingly deep, obviously male voice, but too late is too late and his backtracking just makes it worse.

His new roommate is well-mannered enough to inform him that his name is 'Mello' and yes, he is most definitely a boy and if he dares question his gender again Matt will die slowly and painfully; also, when Matt's whimpering gets too annoying, he is good enough to drag him to the infirmary and drop him off there.

"Was that your new roommate? She's pretty cute," says the nurse who is cleaning out his split lip.

"Mello's a boy," Matt says, and that's one lesson he's not going to forget in a hurry.

-


	2. piano

_Allay Pain - Witch Hunter Robin OST_

Notes: It was two in the morning when I wrote this and I had the song on loop. I'd been playing with the idea of silence and expressing pain through music, and I like how this one turned out.

-

There was piano music in the common room.

This in itself wasn't uncommon; after all, Wammy's was full of children with geniuses of all varieties, and the piano in the main common room was one of the most popular means of diversion for the young virtuosos of the establishment. Rain or shine, the common room had a soundtrack all of its own, it seemed, thanks to these children, and Mello had gotten used to hearing the piano all hours of the day.

The night was another story.

When he woke up at two in the morning, and he could hear the occasional high keyed note echoing down the hallways, that was something unusual, and being Mello, he had to get up and investigate it. So he rolled out of bed and padded out of his room, following the strains of music which gradually grew louder and clearer as he approached their source.

Just outside the doorway, though, he stopped, and listened, caught.

Quiet and hesitant, the person playing was of no great skill. There were discordant notes, too-long hesitations - all the signs of a beginner, or someone trying to improvise without any clear idea of what they wanted to do. But even so... even so, there was a melody, softly dropping into the night like tiny plashes of rain, blue-grey and fog-streaked. Every note, Mello felt, feeling the melody hitting sympathetic chords somewhere deep in him, was a syllable of an elegy, beautiful in its own way, the rain in the tune all the more poignant because of those hesitations, every misstep the reminder that the player was human, and as a human, could not always find the right words to say what they meant.

And Mello listened, because somewhere behind the music was a person with a breaking heart.

He shivered, the notes burying themselves in his bones, and decided that enough was enough, and opened the door.

The boy sitting at the piano wasn't one he knew to look on - a new kid, he decided, a new orphan, and suddenly Mello understood the way the notes fell like tears, like rain, and he stopped, and looked at the boy, turned to sepia in the pale moonlight, sitting there alone in the dark, playing... something, something deep and important, to no one in particular.

And he did know him, he decided, looking closer. The new boy on the second floor - Matt, he thought he was called. The boy who never spoke, who hid himself behind strange flamboyant clothing and quirks of dress, so that no one ever looked past the surface to see the person underneath.

Mello stood there, watching, listening, until the melody trailed itself off into nothingness, and the boy stood, preparing to leave - and saw Mello. His eyes flared wide, and he looked panicky.

"It's all right," Mello said roughly. "You woke me, that's all. I came to check it out and then stayed to listen."

The boy said nothing, but his eyes spoke volumes.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," Mello said.

The boy said nothing, but his eyes were grateful.

"That melody," he said. "It was... lonely. So very lonely. I hadn't heard it before."

The boy said, voice low and rasping: "You wouldn't have. I... was making it up."

"You're new here, aren't you?"

The boy nodded, eyes downcast.

"The one who doesn't talk," he said. "But I just heard you speak."

"Yes," said the boy. "I... talk. I just..." His voice trailed off.

"You speak with that," Mello said, and pointed to the piano. "Late at night, when no one can hear you."

The boy nodded.

"You miss your family."

The boy didn't move, but his head sank lower, hair falling forward to hide his eyes.

"I can hear it," Mello said, and stepped forward, sat down on the piano bench, near the boy. Touched the keys. He knew how to play, of course - every Wammy's child knew how to play at least one instrument - and he touched them, chords echoing the keen, hesitant, poignant melody that the other boy had found, but more regretful. In the light of the sun, with other children around, Mello wouldn't have been caught dead talking like this, talking to the mute boy who would never answer back in the light of day.

But here under the moonlight, with that aching tune running through his veins, he felt connected to this boy, somehow, and the other boy moved instinctively forward to seat himself at the piano beside Mello as he tried to echo the melody, and spoke of his own loneliness through the black and white keys under his fingers.

And the boy picked it up, echoed the echo back to him, threaded the melody back in, and Mello ran a counterpoint melody under it. The two streams of loneliness, his and the other boy's, wound cautiously around each other, touching briefly, awkwardly, moving away, and back together, and then Mello saw it, the hole in the middle, and hit the notes to fill it in.

Minor to major and back, but suddenly it didn't sound so much like loneliness any more, and Mello played, and the boy slowly adjusted his own melody to fit closer to Mello's, until it sounded as one thing, soft and still hesitant in places, but no longer so sad; awkward, but not lonely any more.

"My name's Mello," he said, when their tune found a natural end, keying back into the minor before dying, almost regretfully, away.

"Matt," whispered the other boy, and something almost like a smile trembled on his lips for a moment before fading away.


	3. white

_Heartbreak - CCS OST_

Notes: It took me a long time to understand why this instrumental piece was called _Heartbreak_. It's the uneasy and uneven silences between the glass-like notes ending phrases in questions that makes the feeling real. Tried to convey that here, don't know if I succeeded.

-

The sound of a breaking heart is silence.

".... What?"

"He left," Near repeated, and continued snapping the puzzle pieces together, white on white on white, and Matt watched, thinking white thoughts, blank and smooth as paper, perfectly, uniformly white paper to cover over the cracks and flaws lying just underneath.

"When?"

"An hour ago," Near said. "I saw him leaving out the front gates."

Matt stood up and headed for the door, tiny stains of black marring the whiteness of his thoughts, forming words, slow and careful.

"You know you won't be able to catch up. Not if you don't know where he went."

"Fuck you," said Matt, and left, running down the hallways past all the signs that said _No running in the hallways,_ past the silent dorms, through the lobby, out the front door into the courtyard.

Night was falling, purple and soft, but fuck that, too. He knew where Mello was going. He only hoped he wasn't too late to catch up.

The tree in the graveyard was empty. No skinny little figure in black sat swinging his legs on any of the branches. No crumpled boy in oversized black clothes sat curled up at the base of the tree, among the giant roots. No Mello poked his head out from around the tree, and asked him to come sit by him.

There was no one there.

But there was something white sitting in the hollow of the tree, and Matt pulled it out.

It was a crumpled piece of notepaper, black markings on it difficult to read in the dim light, but not impossible. Matt pushed back his goggles and squinted. Mello's writing.

_I knew this was the first place where you'd come to look for me._

Matt's smile was wobbly. Mello knew him too well.

_I came back one last time. You've probably heard, from Near or Roger or someone already: L's dead. I've left Wammy's and I'm not coming back. You know why. I've told you why, hundreds of times. I'm sorry, but this is the way it has to be. Don't come after me. Don't even start looking for me. Keep your cell. I'll call you when I'm ready for you to follow._

_And don't cry, you wuss. This isn't good-bye. - M._

A laugh choked its way out from underneath the tears that were indeed streaming down his face. Mello knew him far too well. He wiped his eyes, savagely, and recrumpled the paper, then walked away, leaving the message, the place, and as many thoughts of Mello as he could behind him.

The sky was black now, but all Matt saw was white, white, white, and all he heard was silence.

-


	4. without you

_Without You - Rent OST_

Notes: I tried to get the feel of the song in here, with near references to the lyrics. Not much else to say, except all hail the random button, which also presented me with this. I would probably never have used a _Rent_ song for this pairing if it hadn't.

-

Nothing changed.

That was the thing, the horrible, horrible thing. The sun moved on, inevitable as always, cool golden sunrises and brilliant streaking sunsets as beautiful and as separate from humanity as always. Fall turned into winter, wet snow and cold rain, as always - which turned into spring, new grass springing out of the leaf-mold and warming earth, colours coming back into the world, rain, rain, always rain - which turned into summer, long, so long, hot and dreary - which turned into fall -

The swans in the pond near the centre of town had their cygnets, same as always. Some kid in dorms tried to smuggle in a puppy they'd found near the side of the road - same as always. Classes marched past, something to pass the time with, and that was the same as always as well. Kids laughed and played outside in the yard, having forgotten their own personal sorrow long ago in favour of moving on with the world.

His dorm was always the same as well, quiet, dark, strewn with wires and schoolbooks, a comfortable mess, a place of refuge. No one interrupted him there. Mealtimes went on around him, same as always, and he sat quiet near the edges of the room, as always, and pretended he wasn't really there. He lost himself in video games, same as always. That wasn't hard. That was routine, something he'd been doing since he was a very small child. So lose himself in video games he did, and sometimes his schoolwork suffered and sometimes it didn't, but that was also normal, and anyways there was more to life than seeing a nice pointy letter 'A' on his work. He just couldn't quite think of anything else, in particular, at that time.

He forgot.

But something was always missing.

There was a door in his hallway that he always walked past now, instead of stopping and knocking on it, or, just as likely, opening it and walking in. It was still there, but he passed as though he couldn't see it. He sat alone at mealtimes, not because he'd always sat alone, but because there was a sort of emptiness that seemed to follow him and claim the seat opposite him. His room was quiet and uninterrupted, but there had been days, once, where there had always been interruptions, but they hadn't seemed like interruptions because they were almost always welcome.

There had been a time when the change of seasons merited snowball fights, leaf piles, mud fights and watching... someone... playing real sports. There had been a time when after staying up all night, there would have been... someone... to climb up on the roof with to watch the sun rise.

Someone was missing, and no one else noticed; and even he had begun to forget.

That someone was somewhere, still living, still moving on, but where, he had no idea. It wasn't something he liked to think about. Thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant pain. He had an old photo in his room, turned mostly from view, and someone sat in the frame, looking the world right in the eyes and smiling a cocky smile right back at it, every line of their being saying: _I'll take you on. You just wait and see._ And there, in his room at least, the someone wasn't entirely missing.

And then one day it was gone.

He walked into his room, and something was missing. Someone was entirely gone, no presence left at all, and his room was suddenly too dark and too cold, and he had to get out, he was suffocating. He turned abruptly around and left, walking steadily down the hallway. Other children moved out of his way, looking fearful for no reason that he could determine, and he kept going, until he'd run into a dark, thick office door, and was knocking hard.

"Come in."

He pushed open the door and walked in, steady and calm.

"Why, what's the matter, Matt? You don't look well."

The old man sitting at the desk was the same as always, as well. He was old, but he never seemed to get any older. He'd never been caught smiling; he wasn't smiling now. Of course the situation didn't seem to call for a smile; the man was nothing if not the epitome of English propriety. He was always calm, no matter the situation, always solicitous yet firm, and if he hadn't known better, he would never have known that the old man disliked every single child he came in contact with.

He'd never disliked the old man, though. He had a certain respect for someone who could work for so long at a job that put him in contact with people who made him extremely uncomfortable, out of loyalty to an old - now dead - friend. But for a second - only a second - Matt hated him.

"Someone stole Mello's picture from my room," he said, and his voice cracked as it tried to form itself around the syllables of that someone's name, someone who had been gone for years, now, someone he'd never, really, totally forgotten.

"Now, Matt, be reasonable. There's a perfectly good reason for it, I'm sure, and besides, it's only a picture."

_Reason._ He hated reason with a passion the moment Roger said it, even though it was what he based his life on, what every child here based their lives on to some degree. When had reason ever done him any good? Sure, it got him the third best marks in the institute. Sure, it had kept him calm and relaxed even in very stressful situations.

"That picture was all I had left," he said, voice dry and cracked, and Roger was looking at him as though he felt sorry for him, and he couldn't take it, he couldn't take the pity, the dam was breaking, he hadn't forgotten, he'd never forgotten that someone, and he couldn't even if he tried. The someone... the someone had a name again, wasn't just someone, anyone, that person was Mello, bright, fierce, beautiful, necessary Mello, and Mello had left years ago when L had died to take on the world alone, and Mello was gone, and he'd been numb for so long that he'd almost pushed that terrible tumour of a thought out of his mind, exised it viciously from his brain, cut it away with no mercy. "Who took it? You figure there's a good reason. _Who took it?_"

"Near," said Roger, finally. "It's for the case."

And what gave Near any right to take Mello from him? Mello had hated Near, Mello would have spat nails if he'd found out that Near had taken anything of his.

"Where is he?"

"Gone," Roger said. "He caught a flight out of the country a few hours ago."

Mello was gone. Completely, in a way that he had never been in the years since he'd left. Mello was gone, left for duty and ambition and by the hand of someone that Matt had once considered an almost friend.

"That was all I had left," he said again, and his eyes stung. He blinked desperately, but it was too late, too late, and there was nothing he could do because his head hurt, his heart hurt, he couldn't stop thinking about Mello, Mello, Mello, how Mello had just walked out on him without a word of good-bye, walked out on him and ten years of friendship, walked away and disappeared. How could he do that? When had he ever deserved to be left behind? Why did he deserve to have everyone he cared about taken from him, why was he left alone, in the end, purposeless in a world full of purposes?

And it was too late, there were tears spilling from his eyes, and he turned away, because he was eighteen and he was in control and he had no right to be weeping over a five-year-old betrayal like it had just happened yesterday, he'd thought he'd gotten all this out of the way years ago, he was fine, he was OK, Roger, all right, just don't, don't talk right now, just go away.

Mello was gone. The world went on. That was the way things were, and he needed to get used to that.


	5. don't know what you've got til it's gone

_Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell_

Notes: The feel's different, the lyrics are barely related to the text. And yet somehow I feel that it fits. Go figure.

-

When the phone rang that night, he almost didn't pick it up. But only three people in the world had the number, and one of them was dead, and one of them had probably forgotten years ago. The last probably didn't care enough to call and apologize.

"What," he said dully, when he answered.

"Your phone etiquette reeks like year-old gym socks," said the voice on the other end, and Matt's world suddenly narrowed down to hearing and his hand gripping the phone like a lifeline. His head felt lighter than air, his mind suddenly empty of everything except for one name ping-ponging from side to side in his head.

"... Mello."

"So you haven't forgotten my name." His voice was sharp and mocking, but not completely. "What's new?"

"Nothing," Matt said, sincerely.

"In six years? Yeah right."

"Mello isn't here," Matt said, simply. "Nothing changes."

Pause. When he spoke again, Mello's voice was still sharp, but no longer mocking. "Miss me?"

"No." Matt's voice was very dry. "Not until just now."

"Well fuck you too." Mello sounded insulted, almost... hurt.

Matt closed his eyes and said it. "I can't just miss you. It's impossible."

"I didn't ask for fucking details." Mello's tone sharpened even more.

He ignored him, and went on, quickly. "It's like... you remember when you cut your right eyelid open and had to walk around with an eyepatch until it healed?"

"Yeah."

"And you were stumbling into things for the first day or so until you got used to functioning without depth perception."

"Look, I didn't fucking call just to reminisce, Matt. There's something important we need to -"

"Just shut up, Mello, and let me finish!" Matt snapped, and Mello fell silent. "There is a _point_ here, whether you believe it or not, and you wanted to know. Shut up. You remember when they took the eyepatch off?"

"Yeah."

"How it felt?"

"Yeah."

"How?" Matt prompted.

Silence. "The world was clearer," he said. "Of course it was. I had depth perception back. I couldn't believe I'd managed to function for two weeks without my other eye and actually gotten used to it. Matt, what the fuck does this have to do with anything?"

"You're my right eye," Matt said, and then he had to hang up because god damn it, he was going to cry, and he would be damned if he'd let Mello know it. He cried because it was true, because he'd never realized it until he heard Mello's voice again. Because he'd been living numb, and it hurt, coming back to life.

Half an hour later, the phone rang again.

"What," Matt said, and cleared his throat of the last of his aching sorrow.

"You know I fucking suck with metaphors, you jackass," Mello said, but there was something a little softer in his voice now.

"Sorry," Matt muttered.

"You need to leave Wammy's," Mello said abruptly. "I just got word that Near's finally on the field and I'm so far from being caught up that it's not even funny. I need your help."

"What makes you think I want to give it?" Matt shot back.

"Two eyes see better than one," Mello said, and Matt closed his own eyes, because they were stinging again.

"Fine."

"Good. Catch a flight to L.A. I'll meet you there."

"Fine." Matt's mouth was dry, his heart starting pound. This was beginning to seem more and more like a dream.

"As soon as possible. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Good. I'm hanging up now."

"Fine." Matt wanted to say something, something that would make Mello's heart hurt as much as his own did - but that was mere fantasy. Mello didn't really have a heart.

"... Matt?"

"What?"

Pause.

"You'll be there?"

"I said I would, dammit."

Pause.

"Matt?"

"What."

"You're... also my right eye. You know that, don't you?"

Matt couldn't speak for the way his heart had suddenly just lodged in his throat.

After a long period of uncomfortable silence, Mello simply hung up, but that was all right, because he'd said it, he'd all but said that Matt was necessary, and he was going to see Mello again, soon, and that was all that mattered.


	6. drive your car all night

_Waiting in Canada - Jann Arden_

Notes: Again, the beautiful random button gave me this one. It had never struck me before, but it makes a really fitting phone-call fic.

-

"Hey."

The voice on the phone was both familiar and unfamiliar, and Matt did his best to be polite, in case it was a potential client. In reality he was a little bewildered. He had an excellent memory for voices, and this one should have clicked right away, he knew that, but it just wasn't fitting the elusive memory right. He continued leaning back in his desk chair, idly balancing on the two back legs.

"Hey yourself. What's your business today?" He never asked for names. In this world, it was safer not to, and everyone knew that priMe always knew exactly who he was talking to.

"Come get me."

"Pardon?" he said, distracted, almost tipping back too far before he could catch himself, and _damn_, he should know that voice, it was almost there, on the tip of his tongue...

A low laugh. "I asked you to come get me, Matt."

Matt fell over, knees suddenly jellied. He hit the floor and spilled out of his chair, and lay there on the floor, mind buzzing in shock, too stunned to really comprehend what the other voice was still saying in his ear. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" he said numbly.

"I said I thought I could use your help."

"No, before that." Matt's mouth felt like it was slowly being turned to stone. It couldn't be. How had he -? After all this time? How -?

"Matt."

"My name is priMe," Matt said dumbly. "You must have the wrong number, I don't know what you're talking about -"

"Come on, Matt." Exasperation. "You know perfectly well. You may go by priMe now - M-prime - seriously, how could I not know it was you with a name like that? - but you used to be Matt. And before that you used to be called Mail Jee -"

There was only one person who would call that knew his real name.

"Mello," he blurted, cutting him off. His mouth was mouth dry. The crackling on the other end of the line was almost palpable enough to feel the other smiling as he said it. His heart was pounding in his chest. "Jesus fuck, you're still alive?"

"Don't swear," Mello said primly (and hypocritically, as per usual), and of course it was Mello's voice, just deepened now that he was past puberty. Of course. "Yes, I'm still alive. Now I need you to come pick me up."

"Where are you?" Matt hands were shaking. He still had made no real attempt to get back up. His head hurt. Maybe he'd gotten a concussion. It would be all Mello's fault if he had.

"I had to cross the border."

"Which one, Mel?" The nickname slipped out in his impatience at Mello's evasive answers and he cringed, hoping he wouldn't be taken to task for it the way Mello had done when they were younger.

"The Canadian one," said Mello, and Matt relaxed, a little, when he ignored the slip. "I'm in Vancouver."

"Vancouver. Christ, Mello, what the hell are you doing _there_?"

"It was safer," Mello said, and Matt heard a sort of weariness in his tone now that he'd missed before, in the shock of hearing his voice once again. "Just come and get me, Matt. OK? I need to s - I mean I don't have a fucking car and I can't make it back into the U.S. without help. I need to be in New York ASAP. How soon can you get here?"

"Who the hell said I was going to be your chauffeur across the U.S, Mello?" Matt demanded, rolling over and getting to his feet. He felt a lot steadier now. And angry. Mello didn't call for six years, and the first thing he asked was for Matt to drive thousands of miles out of his way to suit his car-less whims. He wasn't all that surprised, when he thought about it, and he would do it, eventually - hell, he had nothing better to fill his time, and the thought of seeing Mello again filled him with a sort of quiet fierce joy. But Mello deserved to writhe a little bit, for his arrogance and the mental anguish that worrying for him had caused Matt over the years. "Gas isn't exactly cheap and I haven't been raking in the cash lately either."

"If you want money I'll make it worth your while, Matt," Mello said, but he sounded... almost hurt? "Just come. Plane, car, heat-seeking missile, fucking origami bicycle - I don't care, just get here, somehow."

"I don't need money," Matt said quickly. "I was just... geez, Mello, I'll come. It'll be..." He thought about it, calculating carefully. With judicially scheduled gas and food stops, travelling just within the legal limits of speed, a few hours of sleep here and there... "Three days, driving. Soon enough?"

"Make it sooner."

"Do you want me to get there alive and without a mile-long train of cops following after me?" Matt demanded. "Three days." Ah hell, he didn't need that much sleep. He'd pulled all-nighters before, beating his own high scores, and enough cigarettes and coffee and convenience store lollipops would pull him through just fine. "... Two and a half. I can't make it any sooner, driving legally."

Silence.

"All right," Mello said finally, quietly. "Call this number when you get just outside the city. If you're longer, I'll assume you were caught and I'll make my own arrangements."

"I'll be there," Matt said. "Don't worry."

"I wasn't worrying," Mello snapped, and hung up on him.

-


	7. forgive me my sins

_The Truth Beneath the Rose - Within Temptation_

Notes: I fell asleep doing Death Note one-shots and listening to _The Truth Beneath the Rose_, trying to figure out what the hell to do with it since it had popped up in the random list I was making to trigger different inspirations and ideas. I woke up with this whole thing basically sitting in my head. And yes, some people might be annoyed by what I did by making Matt the Catholic one, but honestly I've always been puzzled why Mello wore a rosary when he seemed to only have vestiges of a normal conscience, let alone a Catholic conscience, and since we don't know much about Matt, really, why not? There is a method to my madness.

Warnings: ...Really kind of porny. Blasphemy fetish, light bondage, implications of male prostitution... uhhh... o////////o I can't believe I'm posting this.

-

Lying there, waiting, eyes blinded to all that might come, Matt couldn't help but think that maybe this was divine retribution for what he had done. He breathed, in, and out, trying to remain steady, but the smell of incense sweet and heavy in the air made him feel weak, and the heavy links of the chain of the cross that bound his wrists together froze him to the core. He needed no reminder to know that he was cursed in the sight of God. He'd known this ever since he was a kid, brandishing God's word and his battered and abused book against all the encroaching darkness, and now the darkness had come, and swamped him.

Somewhere a door opened, and Matt tensed.

_The guy's crazy,_ the owner had told him. _I can see it in his eyes. Crazy __with__ something, if that makes sense. Be careful. Ring the bell if he's too rough, you're too valuable to be mistreated._

Matt still didn't know whether to thank him for that. The shame of it was redeeming and damning simultaneously. Oh, how the righteous had fallen. Oh... he should have seen it coming from miles and miles away.

He waited, and finally, someone said, low and rough: "So you're ready." He hadn't even heard him come in.

Matt closed his eyes behind the blindfold and nodded, slowly, painfully, because no matter what he'd gone through to get to this point, no matter what he'd sacrificed before the fall in a vain attempt to stay pure, no matter what he did, there was no redeeming what was going to happen now. He deserved it, he knew that. Thought of golden hair like a halo, eyes like arctic waters, and wondered if he would be all right now, if only he'd accepted who he was all those years ago.

"You're tense," said the man - the young man, hardly older than himself, if his voice was any indication. "Are you afraid?"

"Yes," he said. "I don't usually get people like you. Light bondage... I understand that, but why do you need... all this? The crosses. The incense."

The bed dipped a little as the young man sat beside him; Matt felt the smooth rub of leather against his bare skin and shivered. Something slipped between his tangled fingers, another cross on a beaded strand, warm from being worn against this young man's chest. Each bead was worn and smooth. "Do you know what this is?" he said, quietly.

"A rosary," Matt said immediately, fingering each familiar bead wistfully but lightly, as though it burned to the touch. Long ago, he'd given his away. Why, he still didn't know.

"Do you know the words?"

"Yes," Matt whispered, and the young man made a noise in his throat both wretched and pleased.

"Then you know what to say," said the young man, and shifted his weight. Now he was kneeling between Matt's legs, and Matt gripped the rosary harder, running his fingers over the beads more heavily. It felt strangely hot under his fingers. He closed his eyes and bit his lip when his hand drifted over his cheekbone, down under his neck, onto his shoulder, joined by the other hand on the other shoulder, gripping tightly. And then his lips were on Matt's, almost savage, and Matt gasped out _Hail Mary's_ between kisses that smoldered like burning incense.

The young man's mouth left his, moved down his collarbone, fingers and lips trailing down his chest, and Latin poured from Matt's mouth as his skin was bruised under that devouring mouth. The words burned like hot wax, turning the ardour of the kisses to hateful curses, and he could feel his eyes growing wet behind the blindfold, but there was nothing he could do to stop it, and perhaps that was only right.

Long ago, he'd been a fool. Lips moved against his chilled flesh, hot and needing, and Matt remembered, another time, another place, years before, where all was shame or righteousness, and he'd chosen righteousness over shameful sin, cold loneliness over a love that could have been everything, bittersweet as it was, a bright rose infested with thorns, if only he'd let it. It was his fault that it was over with... his fault it had dissipated to nothing, and he took this now, these kisses, these touches, this place where he was, as the only just punishment for his stupidity.

Faith was nothing, he'd found, in the long empty years that followed. The good still died and the wicked lived on, and all that he loved would be carried away the same whether he was sinner or saint, and what was the point of it all, anyways? What was the point? He could have been happy, for a little while, and he'd denied them that, out of his misplaced sense of superior right. He'd found the truth, alone, in the dark, woken from a dream of blindness and found that he was still alone, and still blind.

"Forgive me," he whispered now. "Forgive me, forgive, oh god, please forgive me."

He didn't think he was speaking to the Heavenly Father any more. The angel in his thoughts had a tangible halo, and no wings, earthbound and wild and beautiful, no less precious for his mortality. He'd fallen, too, like the angels, but Matt's fall had no glory, no poetry; just a dark and dirty little secret that tripped him into the dust with everyone else. And maybe that's where he'd belonged all along, in the dust, in the mud, in the dirt with all the other sinners, because the truth was that he'd never been any better than them; he'd just wanted to think so. Maybe the truth was that there was no God after all, no one to care, no one to pick him up after the fall, because he'd pushed the closest thing in his life to the divine away, thinking that what he had was the real thing.

Hot dampness enveloped him, sucking and caressing, and Matt would have gone blind with the sensation if darkness didn't already hold him tightly in its grip. He moaned, and the Latin faltered, and then the warmth was gone and the young man was saying, snappishly: "Keep praying. What makes you think you can just stop like that? You're Catholic, right? You pray and you pray but nothing ever comes from it, yet you keep praying anyways. So keep going."

"I can't," Matt said, helplessly. "I can't, I can't do this, none of it's real. What's faith without love? It was all a lie."

"The rosary," said the young man. "Just say it, meaningless or not."

"_Why?"_ Matt pleaded. "Why, I can't do this any more, there's no truth there for me any more, why do you ask me to do this for you?"

No reply. The warmth returned, and Matt bucked his hips helplessly as the sensation intensified, and he knew, for certain, now, that the one he was asking forgiveness from wasn't God at all. Just a kid, a strange and arrogant kid with a face like an angel and the eyes of a demon and all the passion of humanity boiling in his breast, and he'd loved him, damn it, long ago he'd loved him more than anyone or anything, and he'd given him up for cold comfort and cold love.

And the words spilled out, tortured apologies to that boy, the one he'd loved then and still loved now, cried out broken prayers for his safety and his happiness to a God that didn't exist for him any more, but might for the boy he loved. His arousal weighed down on him like the tip of a sword pushing down on his skin, trying to break through and make him bleed, and the blindfold was soaked with salt and water, lips ragged from biting back the name that he no longer had the right to utter, wrists aching, wet with something that might be blood.

The young man shifted, lifting his mouth away, and Matt gasped, needing, aching for release that he didn't deserve but wanted so badly.

Ragged lips kissing ragged lips, breathing mumbled indecipherable words against his own; the young man had been biting his own lips before, it seemed - against what? Another name, the name of someone like Matt who had wronged him by focussing on the literal and forgetting that all love was salvation? Was that it? Was that why the prayers, the insistence on twisting the cold beauty of religion into something else entirely? _Blasphemy_, Matt would have said once, _blasphemy fetish,_ but not any more, because it was his as much as it was this young man's, and how could it be blasphemy when he no longer thought there was anything there to be blasphemed?

"It's all right, I forgive you, forget it all, forget the past, come back to me. I need you. It's OK, everything will be forgiven." Deep kisses, and Matt drank them in, because how long had he longed to hear those words? Even if they were spoken for the sake of another, how good it felt to hear them, and feel at least the faintest of redemptions.

"I will be your god now, and you will be mine," the young man whispered against his mouth, and with fingers splayed on Matt's chest, he impaled himself on him, slowly, slowly, and began to move. Matt cried out, profanity spilling from his lips as the prayers had only moments before, pleasure building, and the young man drowned his cries in kisses.

Eternity was nothing compared to the blind moments until release, heaven pitiful next to the white light that filled his vision when it came. This was all there was, this was all he had left, and damn it if he wouldn't make the best of it.

Fingers running through his sweaty hair, briefly, almost tenderly, before reaching up to take the rosary from between his fingers, and beginning to unwind the cross from around his hands.

"Why do you keep it?" Matt asked, impulsively, as his shackles fell free. "If you never believed?"

"My prayers are blasphemies, like my love," the young man said, quietly, "but I can hope that if there truly is a God up there who loves his children and believers, he'll listen even to a lost soul who wants the owner of this rosary to be happy, wherever he is."

"You're the one with the better faith than him," Matt said, and lifted up aching hands to cup the young man's face, narrow, well-sculpted, smooth-skinned but twisted. His hair fell like a curtain falling over the burning flesh of his wrists, long, fine, silken. A long, ragged scar trailed across the back of his neck under his hair like a bolt of lightning. He paused, bewildered, lost suddenly in a realm that he knew as well as his own hands.

His face trembled under Matt's touch. Or was it Matt's hands that were trembling, as they ran over this face, this unbelievably familiar face? He didn't know. Maybe they both were. "You're the one with the better soul," Matt said, and maybe it was too much to hope for, that some of the thorns had been stripped away from his forgotten rose, but he was going to hope anyways, and have faith in this person if he couldn't have faith in anyone or anything else.

He pushed back the blindfold and looked into widening arctic eyes.

"_Matt,"_ said the young man, voice suddenly choked, cracking and breaking. Disbelief, longing, and hope filled his voice, his face, his eyes, and Matt wrapped his sore arms around him as Mello dropped his head onto his chest, shoulders shaking, and cried in his embrace.

"I guess sometimes even people like us can get lucky, and find a kind of salvation," Matt whispered, and blasphemy or not, he prayed it was the truth.

-


	8. worth the uphill climb

_There's a Fine, Fine Line - Avenue Q_

Notes: Mentally-overloaded Matt makes me smile.

Also - I feel like a _complete_ tool for this - but would someone mind leaving some constructive criticism for me? I hate asking but I honestly do like to know what you guys think, and while I really appreciate the favourites and alerts, it would also be kind of nice to know what sorts of things I need to work on and what's working for me. I'm always trying to improve, so... Yeah.

That being said, here's three more drabble-shots.

-

He didn't know what they were any more. Well, he did - they were friends, close to each other in the way that no one else was, even when they fought on a daily basis, sniping at every petty, strained wrong word, even though some days they both had to leave, just to avoid hurting each other.

And Mello had kissed him, when Matt had shown up at his door, while he'd been standing there in numb shock, staring at his wounded face. It had been the best kiss of his life, although perhaps that wasn't saying all that much. He'd never really dated around or anything. Mello's cool hands on his cheeks and the warm sweet damp (wonderful) feel of his mouth on Matt's was all that he could coherently remember; describing the sensation, the emotions that came with it, was impossible. It just... _was_, in his memory, and thinking anything more than _"Mello kissed me"_ was asking for a mental overload.

"It's good to see you," Mello had said, breathing it against his lips. Matt had thought that that wasn't even half right, if Mello had seen fit to grace him with mouth contact rather than a friendly punch or even a hug.

"Yeah," he'd said, and it was true, but he wasn't telling the full truth either.

And still, Matt didn't know what Mello had meant with that kiss, didn't know if Mello meant it in a more-than-friendly way, couldn't comprehend the idea when they fought so often, even though they always made up afterwards.

Some days he wanted to leave, to find out if Mello would come after him, but every time he thought it, he knew he wasn't going to. Because if he didn't come after him, the thought of having wasted all that time, all that hope, all that concern and all that love on Mello would be too much to bear.

-


	9. together on phone lines

_Ponytail Parades (accoustic) - Emery_

Notes: The random button forced me to think of this one in terms of this pairing, which I hadn't done; I was used to thinking of it in terms of another fandom. And I have to stop doing phone-call fics. I guess the thing about MxM is that it kind of lends itself to it, since canonically, their interactions _are_ mostly over the phone.

-

He'd been proud, once, of the fact that with thousands of miles between them and years of separation behind them that they'd still kept in contact, still maintained the same friendly banter as always over the phone lines, thousands of miles and thousands of hours hushing the world around them until it consisted of two voices, the feel of the receiver against his ear, and a mental image of the other at the long, tenuous end of the bright wires that were all that still connected their presences to each other.

He'd been proud of the fact that he'd never forgotten how important the other was to him. He'd been ashamed of the fact that, listening to the other's voice over the crackling receiver, he'd grown more and more dependent on hearing from him, staying awake late at nights, thinking of every word, every tone, remembering the times when they were young and how they'd grown up together. Wondering about all the little sounds in the background, wondering where he was now... slowly realizing that he'd made a mistake, letting him go, realizing that despite the separation, despite the years, he needed the other more than ever. And despite everything, despite how different their lives were now, he would have given anything to see him again, to touch him just once, to push aside the veil separating them to look directly into his eyes once more, to ask him if he'd missed him.

What colour were his eyes again? He couldn't quite remember. They'd always been tinted by the amber shield that had hidden the colour and the truth in their eyes from each other.

They still spoke, often, but their conversations were punctuated by long, thoughtful silences, unnerving and comfortable at the same time, and he wanted to say something, to keep talking, but all he could think of were petty details, little things, stuff that he was sure the other really didn't care about, absorbed as he must be in the details of his own life.

He wondered if they were drifting apart, if they were changing too much, and he wanted to tell the other this, how much he missed him, ask him to come find him, but he couldn't swallow his pride and his certainty that the other wouldn't understand this strange, terrifying, consuming need. So he said nothing, and the silences grew longer, more awkward, and he tried to fill them, but there was nothing to say any more but this last of things, the unbreachable barrier that he could not confess to for fear that when it came down, it would destroy everything.

-

"Just a second, let me grab the other phone," said Matt, and Mello waited patiently, listening to the sounds on the other end, hearing... another voice, a stranger's voice, on the other side of the ocean, and suddenly feeling something in his stomach curdling, head going light and strange.

"Sorry 'bout that," Matt said, softly, apologetically. "What's up, Mel?"

"Who was that? Is this a bad time?"

"What?"

Matt sounded bewildered. Mello gritted his teeth, and asked again.

"I heard someone else in the room with you. Is this a bad time to be calling?"

"Oh, you mean -" Matt coughed. "No, don't worry about it, it's no big deal. Just... my room mate. Chris knows not to interrupt my phone time."

"I didn't know you had a room mate," Mello said, and the curdling was worse now.

"Uh, yeah, well... it's a pretty recent thing," Matt said, with a nervous laugh, "but we got along pretty well, and so..."

"Boy Chris or girl Chris?" he interrupted.

"Um, girl," Matt said, sounding embarrassed. "She's just a friend, Mel. There's nothing there that you need to tease me about, OK? We met online at one of my gaming forums and it turned out she lived in my area, so we met up and then her landlord kicked her out and she needed a place to stay..."

"You don't have to get defensive," Mello said sharply, and his stomach hurt now, the sick feeling in it so bad that he could barely think. Matt was living with a girl. Matt was - "And why would I care if she was your girlfriend, either? It's your damn life. It's not like you're not allowed to have other friends, Matt."

"I know."

"Then why are you being so weird about it?"

"I dunno," Matt mumbled. "I just thought... maybe that you would think I was replacing you or something, because you're the only other room mate I've ever had, and I... guess... I feel a little guilty."

His tone suggested that it might be only Mello's words which would reassure him that he was not guilty, and for a long moment Mello was intensely tempted to tell him that he did feel like he'd been traded off, and that he should get rid of this intruder, this... female, immediately. In that moment, he hated Chris, whoever the fuck she was to Matt, just because she was with him and he was not, and there was a chance, a small chance, that if she was there all the time that Matt would grow too close to her, and Mello would be pushed onto a back burner, forgotten, reduced in importance to Matt, and that was something that he could not bear.

"Are you replacing me?" he asked instead - a compromise between comfort and being comforted. His body tensed. What if Matt lied to him, to reassure him? What if it was happening anyways?

_I need to see him,_ he thought, suddenly, numbly, and the thought was so powerful that it took the strength from his knees and forced him to lean against the wall to remain upright. _I need to know for sure -_

"No!" Matt sounded shocked that he would even suggest it. "Of course I'm not, Mello, you're my best friend. Nothing can change that."

_Great._

"Then why the hell do you feel guilty?" Mello demanded.

"... You're right," Matt said, sounding embarrassed. "Sorry."

-

"Was that your American friend?" said Chris, looking up from her Gameboy, which sat on top of a large pile of college homework, when Matt had hung up and returned to the living room.

"Yeah," he said.

"He sounded it," she said. "Loud. Is he jealous?"

"Why would you think that?" Matt said, bewildered. Chris shrugged, kept pressing buttons, her attention almost solely on the console.

"You kind of left the receiver up in this room," she said. "I was in the middle of a level where it would have killed me off to pause and hang it up, so I kind of had to leave it up. I tried not to listen. But he did sound jealous to _me._"

"Why would Mel be jealous?" he said, still lost, and Chris shrugged.

"Why don't you ask him that?"

Late that night, lying in bed, going over his conversation with Mello that afternoon, trying to remember every fluctuation of tone, Matt had a moment of panic. He'd always been able to read Mello like a book. Was he losing him now, after being separated so long, after not being able to look at his face and see the way every bit of truth and every little lie fluctuated across his face? Were they drifting apart?

He didn't know. It was terrifying. And what if Mello had been jealous? Did he have reason? But Chris was just his friend. The one he loved was -

No. Mello wasn't the one who needed to worry.

Sometimes when he spoke to Mello, there were other people audible in another room. And Mello always said, _Oh, that's just Neylon, _or, _that's just Skinner,_ but usually it was: _oh, that's just Rod._ Matt never asked who any of these people were, or why they were always around. He wouldn't have asked even if he hadn't gotten the distinct impression that Mello wasn't allowed to talk about what he was doing, for fear of tapped phone lines. And _Rod_ worried him. Terrified him. What if Mello was with someone else? What if Mello -?

No. Mello wasn't the one who needed to worry at all.

_I need to see him. I need to know for sure -_

_-_

_- that this isn't happening._

But still, he couldn't say it, and he sat there waiting, wondering, hating, voice growing sharp and careless, and the day they had their first fight that took longer than a day to make up from was the day that he felt it all start to fall apart.

_I need to see him again,_ he thought, echoing, all unknowing, the other. _I need to know for sure that none of this is really happening, that I'm still most important to him, no matter what._

_I need to find him._


	10. take back all the things that i said

_My December - Linkin Park_

Notes: The steady background rhythm of the piano in this song gave me the image of the world tipping and turning, and it built itself from there.

-

The world turned slowly around him, a dizzying thing that wouldn't stand still, and he curled in on himself, clutching at the grasses under him in a vain attempt to keep from falling off. He was so cold, so cold. His fingers felt so slow and numb that he wasn't sure he could pry them loose if he tried.

_I'm dying_, Mello thought, distantly, and wondered if thinking that meant he was too far gone to be saved.

He was alone. There was no chance of being saved.

Making it clear of the wreckage had been an agonizing task, completed just barely in time to avoid the rush of EMTs who had picked up the remains of the NPA. Mello could have stayed; no one knew who he was, but somehow Yagami had known his name, and now his face, and he would rather die than be arrested in bed and helpless, chained down with IVs and bandages.

The grass was black with his blood; he was surprised no one had thought to follow the trail he must have left behind him, but that didn't matter now. _Drip, drip_. He could have laughed, if he'd had the strength. Dead by his own hand, his own paranoid stupidity that hadn't been enough to keep him from harm. There you go, Near. You won for sure this time around. Fuck you.

Each blade was slick with it, a mess of liquid and sharply-edged gold, like millions of tiny knives, and no wonder he was dying, if he was lying on a bed of swords.

"I can't die," he murmured, his voice a bare rasping whisper, a wraithlike shadow of its former powerful commanding self. "Can't..."

Somehow he prized his hands free of the ground, and he was surprised when he stayed on the Earth, wasn't flung off into the black reaches of space. With one shaking hand, he extracted his cell-phone from his right pocket, a feat of manouevering all on its own, and flipped it open, stared blankly at the default background of the screen.

Everyone was dead. He had no one to call to come find him, no one to pick him up now that he'd fallen. He'd pushed everyone he'd cared about away, for their safety and his, to strike out on his own, make a name for himself - hurt them, in his need for the ultimate invisibility and self-protection. L, L would still come get him - no, L was dead, and he felt the black shroud of despair and unhappy memory overwhelm him. Wammy - no, gone before L. Matt -

Matt was not dead, he remembered, after a moment of uncertain anguish, and pressed '2', the number he'd programmed to speed-dial Matt's number.

And shut the phone before it could ring more than once. What could Matt do? He'd made Matt hate him, before he'd left. Why would he want to, even if he was near? Matt was still in England. Mello would be dead before Matt could reach his side. Why would he come? For the sake of the friend who'd all but betrayed him, broken his heart?

There was something there that Mello didn't want to think about, because there was nothing he could do now.

But to apologize... maybe there was something to that, if these were his last moments of life.

He pried open the cell again, leaving another smear of darkening blood across the keypad as his index finger found the '2' once again.

Shut the phone.

"Not going to die," he whispered, tried to push himself to his feet. He made it halfway up before needing to stop, black rushing down on him. He could see, in the dim light, his outline on the grass, and that wasn't good. He'd burned badly, he had shrapnel wounds and open gashes that were spilling his life recklessly over the grass - that was a lot of blood, oh dear god, how much was it? How close was he to the point of no return?

Opened the phone, pressed '2'. He was breathing heavily and erratically now as he held it to his ear, listened to it ring, once, twice -

The ground rushed up to meet him in the second after he heard a crackle and a cautious voice say, "Hello?"

"Just a second," Mello said, and managed to push the cell out of the way before he retched. He could hear tiny sounds of alarm from the earpiece of his phone.

"Hello? Hello? Jesus, are you all right?"

Mello pushed himself away from the vomit and caught the cell in his blood-sticky hand, cradled it close. Matt's voice was right in his ear, comforting and real and familiar, the worry in it like blessed coolling rain. "Not really," he said. "Matt, I think... I'm in trouble."

"Christ. Mello. Where are you? Jesus fuck."

"It doesn't matter," Mello said, feeling something like peace sliding through him at the sound of Matt's voice.

"Of course it fucking _matters_, Mel. What happened? Do you need a hand?"

"Stay away," Mello demanded, lying spread-eagled on the grass, closing his eyes. "It's... all right. I don't need... your help here. Fuck... Matt... so fucking _stupid_..."

"Me or you?"

"Both," Mello said, and wished for rain to wash the blood away, clean away his taint. "You hate me... why... would you help me?"

"I never hated you, Mel. Seriously, where are you?"

"Too late," said Mello, and his eyes burned at Matt's words. They were so very... Matt. It had been a long time since they'd seen each other, and god - he didn't know if it was his imminent mortality - but he'd missed him. "Just... talk to me. Everyone's dead. I...I'm so sorry. For everything I ever did. I'm so fucking... selfish... please. Just... let me..."

"Mello, don't talk like that. You make it sound like you're -"

"Dying," Mello said, "Yeah."

"Jesus fucking _Christ_, Mello, where the hell are you? Mello? I know you're somewhere in the American West. Tell me. Fuck, Mel, when were you going to bring that up?"

He heard the fear in Matt's voice, the sheer terror behind it, and felt... grateful, almost, that Matt cared enough to be afraid for him. "Matt. It doesn't... matter."

"Like fuck it doesn't! I'm in Sacramento, how close is that to where you are?"

"Sacramento," Mello repeated, dumbly. So close, yet so far. He was almost close enough to touch. Suddenly, knowing that, he wanted to see Matt's face again, wanted it with an intensity that he thought had been thrown out of him when the base had exploded with him in it. "I'm... in L.A."

"Fuck. OK. This is - this is doable. I know a man with a chopper - he's an instant message away - give me some coordinates - I'm coming to get you."

"No," Mello snapped, spitting it out. "I fucked up. I'm not... worth rescuing, Matt. I never was. My blood... has left puddles on the grass. I can't tell... how badly I've burned. I'm freezing... so I think... a lot. I don't... I don't want you here... just to see me... like this. For this... to be the way you... remember me. Don't come."

"Fuck you," said Matt. "The chopper's on its way. I'll be there in forty-five minutes. Hold on, Mel. Don't you dare die on me. I mean it."

"You're... too fucking good, Matty," Mello whispered into the long, long silence that followed, listening to his own uneven breathing, to Matt's, as the minutes ticked past and disappeared into the yawning, spinning void, and he wanted to cry. "I don't want... to taint you. Please. Stay... away."

"Shut up and think about living," Matt ordered, nearly shouting; Mello could barely hear him over the new background noise, the whipping sound of chopper blades over the rumbling of an engine. "Don't even think about death. Think about something that will make you want to live."

"Matt," Mello said, and wondered that he'd never noticed that his guardian angel had red hair, bad fashion sense, and smoked. "Matt, I'll... think of you?"

Pause. "I want you to live," Matt said, quieter, a little muffled as though he'd held his hand up over the mouthpiece in an attempt to block sound.

"I know."

"I'll be there soon."

"All right," Mello whispered, and their connection was drowned in the roar of the engines screaming across the California sky.

Mello closed his eyes, and prayed for the first time in years, and hoped he could find the strength to keep going until then. The world tilted again, and he held on tight.

-


	11. are you here to stay

_Something I Should Know - Great Big Sea_

Notes: This was actually part of a larger fic that didn't really work out. I liked this part, though. The background scenario isn't really important, and the important things you should be able to pick out from this section. The song came in after I wrote this one.

-

It took a long time for Mello to get better. He was hallucinating horrors almost every night, and Matt couldn't figure out why. His insistence on getting up and moving around even though that simply split his wounds open again wasn't helping either.

"You are such a stubborn ass," Matt told him, time and time again, usually when he was forced to change his bandages after another incident where Mello had been attempting to exert himself too much.

"I know," Mello always answered, almost gravely, watching him as he rewound fresh white bandages over his damaged flesh. "Are you going to leave?"

"Not 'til you're better," Matt would say, and sometimes an unreadable expression would flicker across Mello's face at that.

When Matt was finally able to take the bandages off for the last time, he did his best not to flinch at the sight of the raw red scarring that was taking place all over Mello's face, his shoulders, his legs. He stood back silently in the doorway of the bathroom when Mello went to go look at himself for the first time in two weeks.

Mello took it better than he'd thought he would. Mello had always been a little vain; well, he had the right to be, Matt wasn't about to deny that, with his perfect complexion that never was disrupted by pimples no matter how much chocolate and junk he ate, hypnotic blue eyes, exotic fox's face, grace like bolt lightning as it shattered the sky. He'd known it would be a bad moment.

But Mello just stared himself levelly in the eyes in the mirror, burning, fists clenching and unclenching. And then he said, "So." There was some pain in his voice, but that was all he said about it, and Matt never caught him showing anything more than that.

"Since you're off the pain-killers, you could come have a cup of coffee," Matt said. "If you want."

"You mean that black sludge you call coffee that practically crawls out of the pot into your cup?" Mello glanced at him. For a second his expression looked normal, with only the right side visible, the other curtained off by ragged blond hair. "Yeah, sure."

Matt made coffee, and they drank it together, not looking at each other, in the kitchen. Mello leaned against the counter and seemed almost at home in the half-baked shell of his body. For all his disparaging remarks about Matt's coffee-making ability, he still drank it black, and wasn't so much as shaking when he finished.

Mello started ransacking the place for chocolate, and Matt quietly got his things together and prepared to leave. It was time; he told himself that he'd done more than he'd even been asked or promised to do, that this wasn't abandonment.

"Oh, by the way," Mello said casually, walking by as Matt gathered his electronics back together into one bag, "Your car keys are missing."

Matt looked up swiftly at Mello as he leaned over him on the back of the couch, saw two chains around Mello's neck instead of just the beaded one that belonged to his rosary, heard the clinking as his cross hit something else metallic, under his shirt, a familiar sort of clinking, and he didn't believe him for one second.

"Are they?" Matt said, and rocked back in his seat, abandoning his stealthy packing. There was no point now. "Well, that's a shame. I guess I can't leave until I find them. Sorry if this is an inconvenience, Mello."

"Whatever," said Mello dismissively, straightening back up. "There's nothing I can do about it." But his eyes were gleaming.

"Yeah," said Matt, and wondered how much of an effort he should put into getting them back.

-


	12. talk it out in the rain

_Unsaid - The Fray_

Notes: This thing wrote itself when the song popped up on my playlist. Enough said.

-

The rain pinged off the glass, streaking down it in grey lines. The steel-coloured light made patterns through the rain, flickering across the bed and Mello's back, bared to the cool air. The ugly length of the weal, finally beginning to scar over, was fully visible as Matt slid gentle fingers down his back.

Mello's head tilted backwards, and Matt paused. "Does it still hurt?"

"It's fine," Mello said sharply, and said no more until Matt's hand finally lifted away. He got to his feet, languidly, like a cat, and stretched, then bent to sweep his vest and jacket into his arms, pulling them on and redressing in the awkward silence.

Matt turned away, twisting the cap back onto the tube of vitamin E cream, then loosening it, then tightening it again. "I don't know how much it will help," he said, "but it's supposed to keep scars from bunching and tightening up the skin, so even though it's not much -"

"I said it's fine," Mello said, turning back around, the pale flash of skin between belt and edge of his vest almost glowing in the strange rainy light. "You've done enough for me, Matt."

"You're leaving tonight?" Matt's fingers clenched in the bedspread, unclenched, stilled. Mello stepped lightly over to the window and leaned against the glass, staring out at the rain-slicked city street.

"Yeah. I can't fall behind. I found a place in New York, so I scheduled the first red-eye flight I could get."

"That's good," said Matt, and got up as well, dropping the tube of cream on the bedside table, almost regretting the loss of something to do with his hands. "Are you going to need a ride to the airport or are you getting a taxi?"

"The flight's at one in the morning," Mello said, glancing over as Matt joined him at the window. "Don't trouble yourself with it."

"It's not a problem, Mello, if it's for you."

Maybe the sharpness in his voice was a little bit unnecessary, because Mello's eyes flickered with surprise. "Well," he said at last. "If you want to."

Matt exhaled a sigh of breath, leaning his forehead against the glass, and they stood there in silence, watching water slip down the windowpane. "It's already quieter here," he said to the rain.

"Idiot. I'm still here."

"I know." Matt pushed himself away from the glass. "I'm going outside for a smoke."

The fire escape was deserted; no one was ever out on it, and especially not on such a gloomy day. Matt smoked in silence, sitting on the grid of the steps and shivering a little in the cold, but that was all right. His face was hot, from the cigarette, from the burn that had started just behind his eyes that would not go away.

"You're going to freeze out here, you know."

"It's Los Angeles," Matt said, inhaling deeply on his cigarette and exhaling long and slow, watching it curl away and dissipate into nothing with the condensation of his breath. "Even in the fucking winter, I'm not going to freeze, Mello. Whatever happened to your hardy English constitution?"

Mello leaned in the doorway, watching him, following the arc of cigarette to mouth, and away again to rest on his knee. "It's fine, but this _leather_ jacket was fucking expensive, and I rather like this vest." His pants were normal jeans today, Matt noted, comfortable around-the-house wear. It was nice to know that Mello didn't feel the need to dress to kill, or at least to maim and leave writhing in an alleyway, around him.

"That's your fault," Matt said, blowing out more smoke. "No sympathy here."

Mello eyed him a second longer, and then the jacket was tossed to the floor of the apartment, the vest following shortly afterwards, and then Mello was stepping barefoot out onto the fire escape and settling down beside Matt.

"You ass," Matt said. "You're going to freeze."

"English constitution," Mello said, head bowed, staring at his hands. "I don't care."

"For fuck's sake, Mel, you're the only guy I know who wears a jacket that he actually takes _off_ in bad weather." Matt tried a smile. He watched their breath puffing out in slightly syncopated rhythm, mingling in the cool air.

"You obviously don't know many people," Mello said coolly, and then there was silence again, breathing in and out on its own in the space between them. Matt closed his eyes as the rain trickled down his face, the hot burning sensation behind his eyes intensifying, not subsiding.

"Mel," he began, but Mello had already started talking again.

"You've done a lot for me, Matt," he said. "I really think I might have died, if you hadn't come to pick me up. So... So. Thanks."

"You sound like you're saying good-bye already," Matt said. "It's not even seven."

"I just wanted to say it now." Mello glared at his hands. "Before I forgot."

"Oh," said Matt, and he didn't know what else to say or do. "OK."

"And it's been good." Mello looked like he was trying to make his hands spontaneously combust, so much effort was he putting into staring at them. Matt wanted to take those hands in his own, hide them from that terrible potent glare, and just - hold them. "Seeing you again. It's been..."

"Good," Matt said quietly, and resisted.

"Yeah."

Matt was soaked; his cigarette had almost gone out, so he tossed it over the railing down to the rough pavement of the alley. "Going in?" he said, getting up and stretching. Something felt oddly empty inside him; he didn't know what it was, but it made him almost sick with it.

"Matt."

"What?" Matt paused in the doorway, looked at Mello, watched the rain pouring down, glistening on Mello's hair, in the hollow of his collarbone, running caressingly down his bare arms and back.

The hands came up, still twisted together, and positioned themselves right in front of Mello's damp lips so that he spoke into them and muffled the sound.

"I have two tickets, Matt." There was a note of something like uncertainty in his voice, a wordless qualifier of _if _following swiftly on its heels.

Matt held his breath, listening to the rain coming down, thought, distantly, that when Mello finally deigned to come in, he was going to force him to take a long, hot shower. His lips - what he could see of them - looked as though they were turning blue. But Mello wasn't moving, just sitting there hunched in the rain like a gargoyle, water dripping off of him.

Two tickets. Yeah. That was something. He could live with that unspoken promise.

"OK," said Matt, and left the shelter of the doorway to sit down beside him once more. They stayed there until Mello was shivering, watching their mingled white breath curling around every drop of rain that it touched.

-


	13. never trust a fella with a helmet

_Great Big Sea - Helmethead_

Notes: I had no idea what to do with this one to begin with - seriously no clue. The original song is about a hockey player (using more than one sense of the word 'player'). How do you connect that to Death Note? This is how I did it. Because what the hell.

Warnings: language.

-

"How's Hal?" Matt asks, not looking up from his video game.

"Fine." Mello takes the motorcycle helmet off, drops it unceremoniously on a chair, and heads to the kitchen for chocolate.

"You had an email from Linda today," Matt calls out after him. "I didn't know you two still kept in touch."

"We don't, usually," says Mello, coming back out of the kitchen as he tears the tinfoil away from his prize with his teeth. "She must have an art show coming up or something; she likes to let me know. As if I could ever show up." He snorts at the ridiculousness of someone of his notoriety crashing a show for someone like Linda.

"I was going through the files on your laptop today and making sure I had all the ones relevant to Kira organized in one place," Matt says as Mello flops on the couch beside him. "Why do you have all these pictures of scantily clad mafia women?"

"Fuck, I forgot to delete those," Mello says. "Don't mind them; they're not important."

Matt's giving him the Eye now, but it rather loses its impact through his goggles. "You know, if you're bi or something, you're allowed to tell me. I don't really care."

And then Mello gets it, and he laughs explosively. "Matt, are you jealous?"

"Fuck no," snaps Matt, and actually takes his hand off the controller long enough to hit him, hard, but Mello knows he's right.

-


	14. so many souls lose their way

_Sleepless - Jann Arden_

Notes: My random button is the most amazing thing ever. It senses things I'm thinking of and gives me exactly what I want - I swear.

-

"Maybe Kira was right," Matt said idly, flicking ashes off the end of his cigarette out the window.

"What?" Mello's hand on his shoulder tightened painfully, and Matt just shrugged.

"The world is rotten," he said. "How many people live in this world? Four, five, six billion, and of all those people, how many can claim to be truly honest in deed and intention? How many can say they've never done any wrong, never caused another living soul grief?"

_Absolutely no one,_ Mello knew, but he wasn't about to say that, inflamed with his partner's suggestion that the man they were trying to bring to justice wasn't all wrong.

"How can anyone judge all those people?" Matt said, inhaling deeply on his cigarette, staring blankly out the window and down the street. "It's hopeless, isn't it, Mel? All those lost souls and not a damn thing anyone can do to make it truly better. Doesn't that depress you, sometimes? Do you ever feel that maybe there's no point to what we're doing, that it's all going to get lost in the apathetic morass of humanity, that no one's going to care even if we succeed?"

"All the time," Mello whispered, throat dry, and forced himself to relax his grip.

Matt's hand over his startled him. His thumb absently stroked circles on Mello's skin, slow and lazy. "How do you make yourself care?"

"I'd go insane if I didn't," Mello said. "How do you not?"

Matt turned in his chair, tilting his head to one side in that curious, child-like fashion of his, and smiled, serene. The burn of the coal at the end of his cigarette seemed to light his pale skin with a feverish glow. "_You_ know. All I care about is what's always close at hand. That's all I've ever wanted for myself. Why should anything else matter? There are enough people out there who make the whole world their business without needing me to join their numbers."

"That's a stupid way to live," Mello said, even though Matt was looking at him, meaning _him._

"Maybe to you," Matt said, and exhaled smoke in a swirling cloud, obscuring his eyes.

Mello looked away, and Matt's thumb kept moving over his hand in slow steady strokes, a smooth rhythm of sensuality that made him ache for a sort of touch he didn't want to give himself over to, and thought maybe Matt was on to something after all.

-


	15. you still have all of me

_My Immortal - Evanescence_

Notes: I don't know why the pigeon is there, but it's cute. As much as pigeons ever are cute. I like them like Mello likes them, so I guess that's saying something.

-

The note taped neatly to the kitchen counter said, simply: _I have to leave. I'm sorry._

Mello ripped it off and stood over the garbage can tearing it into absent-minded, tiny little pieces as he wondered why.

It was snowing, flakes touching the ground tenderly in winter's kindest kiss, barely cold enough to freeze. Something in the air, even in the fetid depths of New York City, felt and even smelled like Christmas, even though it was January and Christmas was long over.

Mello put on his coat and trudged out into the platinum air, breath puffing out before him in white clouds, blinking snow out of his lashes as it fell into his face. He remembered winter in England, suddenly missed it so badly that it physically hurt, and he had to get on a public bus so that he could sit down and ride it out.

It seemed like an accident when he found the Camaro parked down near the breakwater hours later, Matt sitting on the hood in nothing more than what he normally wore, vest hardly adequate to keep him warm, smoking and staring at the flat grey sky. Mello hung back near the packing crates, settling down on one and waiting for Matt to notice him. There was a pigeon strutting and cooing around on the ground near where Matt's feet dangled over concrete. Mello hated pigeons - it was their eyes, so soulless, and their creepy movements, and it was totally irrational. He wanted to shoot it, but that would draw far more attention to him than he desired.

And Matt was talking to it. It seemed like a good idea to listen in. Matt never talked like this to _him_.

"It's like I'm just a mirror to reflect his own ideas back to him," Matt said. "You wouldn't know, I guess - maybe it's like always being thought of as the city's greatest pest and death-carrier, even if you're the most upstanding member of your own little pigeon community. All you can think is _why?_"

The pigeon cooed, flapped its wings once or twice to fluff out its feathers, seemed to hunker down for a good old heart to heart.

"Six fucking years," he said, finally. "Six years without a word and then one day he just calls - I'm still in fucking England, got a good steady legal job, been trying not to remember how much better everything was when we were best friends, partners in crime - whatever the hell you want to call it. So he just calls. Says he needs my help. Says he's already got the plane ticket arranged, that he _needs_ me there."

The pigeon just watched, bright-eyed, head cocked.

"So idiot that I am, I drop everything and come, because it turns out that I can't forget. I can't put the past behind me - god, I tried so hard. I knew it would only hurt later. I knew it was only my... my stupid hope that he would be thinking of me and missing me too. We were kids. Fuck. Kids grow up, move on, forget, forgive, live and grow and learn to avoid selfish bastards the next time around. Except I'm still that kid. Maybe it's not normal. But he was all I ever had.

"Number three wasn't important to anyone - except to him. My parents never knew what to do with me - and then they died, and then it was Roger and Wammy who didn't know what to do with me, because God knows no genius-in-the-making is supposed to spend so much time obsessing over video games. He cried in front of me. I keep telling myself - he trusted me, once, as more than just a mirror. He would never let it out when he was alone. He would never let it out with anyone else. Just me. So - yeah - I felt... special, I guess, terrible as that is to admit. He could lose it with me, scream and cry and curse his life and everything to oblivion and I was there, every time, trying my best to hold him up. Just because I wanted to see him smile once more.

"Then he left. I guess I've been lying to myself for years now, but that's OK. It doesn't hurt. I'm used to it.

"I can't be a mirror, though. I'm a person - God, such a pathetic person, but still a person. I have hopes, I have aspirations, as uninspiring and selfish as they may be. I just - fuck. This was supposed to be me, sitting here, convincing myself that it's OK to go, that he doesn't need me, that a blank computer screen would work just as well. I just - now that I'm here - talking to a fucking pigeon, Jesus _fuck_, how low have I sunk?" He laughed, then coughed, having forgotten to take the cigarette out of his mouth. "I can't do it," he said finally. "I got the ticket back to England. I didn't say good-bye. I did everything I could to make it easy, but - but - " Another laugh, self-deprecating and a little scared. "I can't."

Mello slid off the packing crate, considered the advantages of going over and sitting down beside him, just sitting there in silence until he could work up the nerve to tell him that he was sorry. The disadvantages were far more obvious. Matt had always been a terribly private person.

"I think it's because I'm in love with him," Matt said, voice barely above a whisper, and dropped his cigarette to the ground where the end still glowed, cherry-red. "I think I always have been. So it's my own fault that I'm so pathetic, really... but I can't help but blame him too, because I think, if only he'd treated me like everyone else _before_, I wouldn't be this disaster waiting to happen."

"Am I really so selfish that I did that without noticing?"

It was out before he realized. Mello hadn't meant to say anything, had meant to walk quietly away and confront Matt later in the warmth of their shared apartment. But it was out; the glove was thrown, and he stood there numb, breath puffing out in short little clouds. He felt something like adrenaline rushing through him, making him light-headed and his heart pound. This was wrong; he was Mello, he didn't confront anyone over emotional issues, he didn't lose breath or sleep or thoughts over emotions either. But he'd never thought; he'd never considered the idea that someone might care about him that much.

_I'm in love with him,_ Matt said over and over in his head, and Mello had never realized how much he'd been praying for that kind of acceptance from him. He was so fucking selfish.

Matt stiffened; the tension in his body was clear even from back here. "How much did you hear?" he said finally, heavily, sliding off the hood of the car and turning to half-face him, profile only.

"Enough, Matt." Mello wanted to shoot that pigeon for listening in on this. It was bad enough that he was exposing his weaknesses to Matt, but that creepy soulless arrogant little bird was too much.

Matt was going to leave him if he didn't say something now.

"You should have told me," he said, mouth moving as though it were slowly turning to stone. "Fuck, Matt, I didn't think we had any issues like... that."

Matt stared at his feet.

"You're really ready to leave."

"All packed and on my way to a hotel," Matt said. "My flight leaves tomorrow..." His voice cracked, steadied, and Mello didn't think he could take this much longer.

"Matt," he said. "Matt, if it's what you want - you can -"

He couldn't say it. The words locked in his throat and died there, screaming, and he didn't want Matt to want to go. He wanted him to stay. He wanted to put his arms around that stupid ass and tell him that he'd never meant to push him away and god, he was all that Mello had too - couldn't he see that? Didn't he see that losing Matt and his quiet confidence and his love would take away one of the last supports holding Mello's world up?

"Do you want me to leave so badly?" Matt said quietly. His posture was slouched and tense and unhappy, and Mello had never meant to do this to him. He wanted to see Matt smile again. That lazy devil-take-all smirk was something that Mello couldn't imagine not seeing again. He had to say something; he had to let Matt go if it would make him happy.

"No," Mello said. "No, I don't, Matt. I don't want you to - I can't just let - I can't watch you walk away and stay unchanged - I just want -" His face was hot, and oh god, he was going to break down if he kept talking like this. He, Mello, was going to cry if his best friend walked out on him, and he was not that weak, he couldn't be that weak. Matt had let him go once. Surely he was the stronger one.

"If you think you have to go," Mello said, changing tacks, "then go. Just go, and... and never come back." He turned and stalked off. He couldn't look at Matt any longer.

He'd made it around the corner when the Camaro pulled up beside him, rolled along as he kept walking, faster. Vehicles behind it honked angrily at him, pissed off for him holding up traffic for no visible reason.

"Mello," Matt said.

"What?" snapped Mello, letting his hair fall forward to cover his face, damp in spite of his best intentions.

"Get in the car, Mel."

Mello turned to look at Matt, who smiled, pulled over, held out his hand. "Come on. You know you want to."

"Yeah." Mello opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat. Matt reached over and gripped one hand tightly in his right.

"It's cold," Matt said. "Let's go back?"

"Yeah," Mello said, and caught Matt's hand tight in both of his, pressed it to his chest. Matt's fingers curled around his, tangled and knotted together, their mutual tie to the only anchor each had left. Mello cradled their joined hands in his lap, and was honestly glad, for the first time in a long time. "Let's go home."

-


	16. as the rain fills every ocean

_Kindle My Heart - A Little Princess OST_

Notes: I had the metaphors floating around my head already and I was wondering what to do with them when this song popped up. Absolutely unrepentant and mostly ridiculous fluff. Fits the song nicely, then. =D And I tend to get like Mello when I drink. Just louder.

-

The street had flooded. Matt sighed, and flicked cigarette ash down off the balcony and watched it disappear into the muddy, grimy wash, wondering how badly the water was going to damage the engine of his car.

It was a gloomy, horrible, no-good sort of day, the kind that sapped all of what little ambition he had and left him with complete apathy. He'd tried to get some work done for Mello, but every ten minutes found him out here staring at the world rushing past him far below. Three hours ago the electricity had suddenly died all up and down the block, and now there was honestly nothing to do.

"The power's out here, too?"

Matt glanced behind him. Mello leaned casually in the doorframe, eye half-hooded, arms folded across his chest, hair the one spot of colour in this world of dull greys, browns, and ugly, burnt, sooty yellows.

"For three hours," Matt said, and blew out smoke. "Not much I can do without it. Where've _you_ been? You didn't come back last night, did you?"

"Out," Mello said, sharp and succinct. "It's none of your business where." His voice was quiet but precise, each syllable enunciated deliberately and perfect, and Matt wanted to groan.

Mello was only ever quiet and completely in control of every word formed by his mouth when most normal people had the least amount of control and were often the loudest: when he was _really_ pissed off at someone, or drunk almost out of his mind. Neither was good news for Matt. Either Matt was about to get his ass handed to him, or Mello was going to start going off on uncomfortable, awkward and occasionally terrifying tangents that Matt never knew how to respond to. Mello seemed to have a thing for leaving him flat-footed with shock and horror. He wondered why that was, with some trepidation, and braced himself but said nothing for now.

"Grey," Mello said finally, and walked - carefully, precisely, oh damn, he _was_ drunk - out to join Matt leaning on the railing. "Grey, grey, grey. What a horrible, lousy day. New York is a cesspit. The refuse of humanity lives here and when it rains they all float to the surface like oil and scum and garbage."

Matt said nothing, just flicked his cigarette down into the watery grave of the street and lit another one. He had a feeling he might need it.

"Another day lost," Mello said, heavily, and this was a new tangent for a drunk Mello to go on - not so new for Mello, sober.

"We'll work twice as hard tomorrow to catch up," offered Matt, trying to cut him off at the pass. It didn't quite work.

"What's the use?" Mello stared, unseeingly, down into the street. His eyes were dull and dark. "What is the god damned _use_ of it all? We're always behind. We'll never catch up. What's the purpose? Chasing after something that can never be won - how pathetic is that? What kind of crazy person would keep trying and trying even though it's been clearly shown to be impossible? That's insanity. Who the fuck did I think I was? Who the fuck _am _I, any more?"

Matt stayed silent, unsure whether this was just manic, depressed rhetoric or if he was actually required to give an answer.

"_Matt."_ Mello turned his head slightly, eyes still half-hooded. "Are you going to answer me, or what?"

Shit. Matt sighed. "You're Mello," he said. "And Mello's a stubborn bastard. That's why Mello does so well at everything he puts his mind to. Ease off on the gloom, OK? It's dreary enough out here without you adding to it."

"It brings it out in me." Mello's laugh was short and dark and humourless. "I'm not all flowers and sunshine, you know, Matt."

"You aren't?" Matt couldn't help but crack a smile at that in an attempt to lighten the mood. "News to me."

"Shut up," Mello said suddenly and roughly. "Just shut the hell up. What would _you_ know about it? I've been worming along through the dirt and the dark for years, now, I'm more mud and slime than human. You don't know what I've done, what I've tried, to get to where I am right now. I..." He cut himself off, seething. "God. You don't know how much I envy you sometimes," he said, and it took Matt a long moment to realize he was talking about him. "No ambition - no need to _move_ and always keep moving... you just _flow._ How the fuck do you do that? It pisses me off so much."

He slumped, face dark and moody, and Matt didn't know what to do, whether to step forward and offer him awkward comfort or to stay back and let him talk it out. A depressed Mello was scary too, in a different sort of way.

"You're... like the ocean," Mello said, after a long pause, and Matt blinked at that. His voice was quieter still, almost soft. "Always there, changing while remaining the same, always constant. You don't have to do anything or even be seen and you're just... important. Everywhere. You -"

Mello stopped, struggled, took a deep breath and went on. It seemed he'd been thinking a lot about this, Matt thought, wondering where he was taking this. "Intrinsic. That's the word. You get everywhere and people never notice you, but you're _there_, and whatever the fuck you do is somehow necessary. You're not even concerned with justice, or anything in particular, just the way things are. I don't understand you sometimes. You're so god damned different from me. I'm not anything like that. How the hell do you even stand being around me?"

Matt was silent for a long time, both a little touched and unnerved. Mello was _very_ drunk, if he was saying this. He'd had no idea that Mello might envy _him, _of all people. And if Mello hadn't been so drunk, he probably wouldn't have responded the way that he did.

"You're the moon, Mello," he said, quietly, and Mello blinked at him, apparently non-plussed.

"...Uh?"

Matt's whole body was shivering with the thought that had taken form in his head, but it was out now. It was a good thing Mello was so drunk, Matt thought fervently, or he might never have the courage to say what he was about to say now.

"The one thing that moves the sea without fail."

A long, cool look from Mello was his only response. Matt sighed, and tried to elaborate.

"Even if you're not intrinsic, you still change the world. Mello, if there was no moon, the sea would be nothing but a big stagnant puddle. How different would things be if there was no moon? It's always moving and changing. It's the brightest thing in the night sky. No stupid little star could compare."

Silence. Mello seemed to be considering his words. Matt inhaled deeply on his cigarette and tried to keep from nervously chewing on the end.

"...The moon's light is too pale, too useless, next to the sun's," Mello said, finally. "The sun always shines brighter, no matter how well the moon reflects. It's a mirror. Nothing more. What good is a mirror next to the reality and warmth of the sun? Who even looks twice at the moon when they know that the sun is on its way?"

"I do. Stop thinking about Near," Matt snapped, because he knew Mello and his inferiority complex - almost an entirely separate entity, at times - far too well. "He's not the goddamn sun. If anyone's the damn sun, it's L. Near's just a satellite, not any better of a mirror than you. Maybe his angle's better right now, but that can change. We'll find a goddamn meteor and knock him out of orbit, OK? Don't give me this crap about being nothing. I don't care how gloomy you are, you're not allow to even think that, got it? You're the moon - fire - salt - air - whatever the hell you like, so long as it's necessary and vital. So -"

Mello yanked him in and kissed him.

Matt's heart failed him for a moment. What - the - hell...? He tasted chocolate on his lips, untainted by anything else, strong and all Mello, and Mello's mouth was warm and rough and fierce against his own, sending warmth spiking back through him, and what the hell, what the _hell _-?

"You're not even _drunk_, are you," was the first thing that Matt thought to blurt out in total shock when Mello released him to stagger backwards. His mouth was tingling pleasantly. Oh _hell._ No, it wasn't, it couldn't be, this was fucked up and beyond weird, oh hell, oh hell...

Mello shrugged and looked away, hands digging into the pockets of his coat. He licked his lips, slow and thoughtful, and Matt had to shiver. Oh, _hell._

"Yeah, but you would never have said such nice things if you thought I was sober," Mello said, completely unrepentant.

"You twisted little _bastard,"_ Matt accused. He could still taste Mello. _Fuck._

Half of a smirk, quiet and sly. "I know." He patted Matt on the shoulder briefly. "But never a _lying_, twisted little bastard." He turned and sauntered back into the apartment.

Matt stayed out on the balcony for a while longer, trying to get a hold on himself, watching the grime being washed away down the grey streets with an intensity that perhaps it didn't deserve.

And then he thought of something.

_I'm more mud and slime than human._

_You're like the ocean._

It was a curious sort of thought, one that took his breath away if he looked at it for too long. He closed his eyes and breathed in, and out, and thought of tides moving ceaselessly, the moon chasing after the sun, growing and fading, bright and untouchable, and he wondered how bright Mello would shine if he felt that all the dirt was gone from him.

He walked back in to the apartment, found Mello lying on the couch, face buried in a cushion by the couch arm. Matt knelt beside him, touched him. The bare skin of his shoulder was almost hot under Matt's chill fingers.

"Mel."

He turned to look at him, glaring up at him through his curtain of hair. "What the hell do you want now?"

Matt swallowed. "The ocean's... made of water?" He hadn't meant to make it sound like a question.

"Yes, Captain Obvious, the ocean is made of water." Mello frowned at him. "What the hell are you getting at?"

His lips felt numb, but he could _still_ taste Mello on them, bittersweet and oddly comforting. Mello's narrowed eyes were blue, blue, bluer than sky and sea combined, golden hair bright like the sun. Oh hell. This might be pushing the metaphor harder than it should be pushed, but that gold and that blue had sparked something, inside, and the thought of Mello was pulling at him like the moon on the tide, and oh hell, he'd been screwed for a long time without even knowing it.

"Then the ocean... could wash all of that dirt and darkness away, so that the moon would never wane?"

Mello's eyes widened. Matt did his best to hold his gaze, even though his nerves were playing havoc with his body and brain.

"Maybe," Mello said at last, "Maybe -"

"Maybe's a good start," Matt said, and Mello's return smile was awkward but real, and almost gentle.

_-_


	17. bathed in moonlight

_Descent of the Archangel - Kamelot_

Notes: The moment I got my hands on the lyrics, I knew exactly what was happening here when it came to writing it, and I actually went red. I wrote this one before I wrote "Forgive Me My Sins," to be honest. I don't usually write porn (at least never to share or particularly blatant), and I don't usually do seduction fic; the thought of posting that sort of thing always makes me incredibly anxious and embarrassed and twitchy, so this whole thing was a bit of a challenge. Surprisingly, a fun one.

Warnings: language, sexual implications; surprisingly only a little in the way of bad language.

-

Matt was half-asleep on the couch when the door opened and the light in the entryway flickered on briefly, then off. Footsteps scuffed against the carpet, and then there were two heavy thuds as a pair of boots was removed with little ceremony. Blearily, he sat up and glanced at the clock on the VCR. Three in the morning. So much for Mello's claims that he'd be home before midnight. Oh well. As long as he came back at all, that was all that Matt asked for.

He never was able to fully fall asleep until Mello was safely back in the suite. Maybe it was paranoia that Mello would just walk out again. Maybe it was just honest concern for his best friend that kept him up until Mello walked in the door. Whatever it was, Mello was back, and so everything was good.

He yawned and lay back down, listening to the sounds of Mello stumbling around in the dark getting ready for bed, and grinned to himself, comforted by the familiarity of it all. His eyes slid closed again, and he drifted off into darkness once more. Sinking into fuzzy dreams, Matt wondered drowsily if Mello would explain his absence in the morning or if he would have to poke and prod as usual.

Matt woke up suddenly, not quite sure why. The couch shifted underneath him, the cushion dipping on his right side by his hip, and as Matt blinked his way back towards wakefulness again, it dipped again on his left, and he became aware of a damp, warm presence hovering above him, heavy and unnerving.

He opened his eyes, and then he opened them again, even wider, heart pounding in his throat.

Skin gleaming white in the moonlight, so much skin, fair and smooth, bared to the night air, softly shadowed along the contours of muscles, turning the wiry body straddling his, kneeling on either side of him, into perfectly smoothed marble. A towel was all he wore, draped over his shoulders and spread wide like wings, covering precisely nothing, and Matt swallowed hard, heart staccatoing even as he couldn't stop staring.

For a second - only a second, but a very powerful second nonetheless - Matt thought an angel had dropped into his lap, until he dared to look under the gleaming halo of shining, silvered hair hanging like a curtain around his face to see two eyes like knives with demons dancing in their depths.

"Mello, what the -?"

"Shhh," murmured Mello, hell glittering in his eyes as he leaned forward and rested his silver-shadowed hands on Matt's shoulders, pinning him down with his weight. Matt panicked, knowing too well what happened to people who faced Mello when his eyes were full of hellfire, and started struggling, figuring himself as good as dead, although for the life of him he couldn't imagine what he had done wrong. And why couldn't Mello wait to kill him until he had clothes on?

Mello's hair was brushing his cheek. Matt's world had suddenly narrowed to the intimate, veiled and shadowed space beneath the surrounding curtain of Mello's hair. His nose was almost brushing Matt's as he whispered, "Don't move. Just... feel."

"What -?"

And all his breath left him in a gasp as Mello lowered his head to his neck and melded his lips to his skin, hot and rough-gentle and damp, lips, tongue, teeth, grazing and molesting his jawline, swirling, nipping, _kissing_, working his way towards his ear, torturously slow.

"A - ah -! Fuck, Mello, w-what are you _doing?_" Matt couldn't help the half-moan that escaped him. Christ, he'd had wet dreams like this, but Mello wasn't supposed to know about those - it was a deep, dark secret. Mello was so dangerous. Mello was so beautiful, pulling back, dark eyes burning into him from under half-closed lids shadowed by lashes. Christ, he was helpless under that stare, he didn't know what Mello was after, and he didn't think he wanted to know. He had to be dreaming. Yes, that was it, he had to be dreaming -

"What you want," Mello said. Leaned in, breath hot and dizzy with the smell of alcohol and chocolate, and kissed him, crushing and fiercely passionate. "This is what you want, Matt," he breathed against his lips. "I'm not stupid, you know. I've seen it in your eyes for months now." His tongue flickered across Matt's mouth before he locked his lips onto Matt's once more. "What's your sin, Matt? How far do you want to fall with me tonight?" he whispered.

"Are you serious?!" Matt whisper-yelped. "Mello, you're crazy. You're _drunk._ Get off me. Go to bed."

"I'm serious," Mello said, and his dark, dark eyes pulled him in, wrapped him in darkness and warmth, and Matt was dazed by the moonlight and the shadows and lust in the dark. He stared up at Mello, lips unconsciously, slightly, parted, eyes wide, wanting and disbelieving at the same time so strongly that he thought he might go mad. "I'm not crazy. And I may be drunk, but I know exactly what I'm doing."

Deep kiss; Matt gave himself up, helplessly, to it, drowning in the taste of Mello, the warmth of his bare body pressing against his, the intoxicating silver shadows and the need in Mello's half-lidded eyes, in his devouring lips.

"W-we _can't_, Mello, you're my best friend, this isn't -" he gasped when Mello finally released him.

"We can." Kiss; the insinuation of his body against Matt's, achingly slow and perfect, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, hair brushing his face, soft and strange like spider's silk.

He wanted to kiss the hollow of Mello's shoulder, shaded and softened by the dim light, but tried to resist. This wasn't fair. He wanted this so badly. He couldn't believe Mello was actually doing this, saying this, touching him, kissing him, moving against him like _this._

"_Because_ I'm your best friend," Mello went on, and Matt wanted to be seduced like this, he wanted to throw aside all reason and caution and just believe - but he couldn't. "You trust me, right?"

"Of course," Matt whispered. _Don't, don't give in,_ he told himself fiercely, but his willpower was steadily fading away.

"You're not going to leave me, are you?" Mello said softly.

"No," Matt choked as Mello moved against him again. Christ. _Christ. I am not - not aroused... not aroused by this... not -_

"You want me?" Mello all but purred into his ear.

"..._Yes," _he moaned, helplessly, and was rewarded with a shining, triumphant smirk, teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

"And I want this too," Mello said, and pressed a soft, almost tender kiss to his forehead. "I've wanted this too, Matt, for a long time. Believe me. Believe me, Matt, I want you, I want to have you, I want you to stay with me and fall with me and I want to let it all go, with you. Matt... Mail," he murmured, with another kiss on his forehead, "I'm only drunk because I can't let go, I can't get rid of my barriers and my control and I wanted to, but I couldn't. Forgive me. I can't do this without the drink."

Not thinking, hearing only the pleading, needing anguish in Mello's voice, Matt reached up and gently brushed Mello's hair away from his face, letting his fingertips trail over Mello's skin, the scarred and broken side of his face, the half-mask of tragedy.

Mello's eyes slid closed, and he shivered under that light touch. And Matt was suddenly struck with the overwhelming freedom and power that Mello was letting him have over him, and shivered, too, unable to stop, until Mello bent and nuzzled his neck, kissing, kissing, kissing.

"Tell me what you want, Matt. Whatever you want, every sin you've ever wanted to commit with me... it's yours."

"Oh god," said Matt, still trembling as Mello kept touching him, rough-smooth fingers bringing his skin up to burning fire.

"How far, Matt?" he whispered again, kissing, still kissing. "How far do you want to fall with me?"

"Forever," breathed Matt, and this time when Mello caught his mouth with his own, he kissed him back hungrily.

-


	18. tangled up in you

_Collide - Howie Day_

Notes: I like morning-after fic. And I love this song, which is very fitting for this particular pairing.

Warning: ...fluff, I guess? And implied sex prior to the scene.

-

It had been a mistake.

No, not a mistake, precisely, but it certainly hadn't been something either of them had meant to have happen. Matt was perfectly aware that when Mello woke up he would be in a world of trouble and pain that he couldn't even imagine, if he was caught still lying here with bare arms and legs wrapped around Mello. Mello's arms and legs were equally twined about him, a tangled mess of limbs and tousled hair and quiet, steady breathing. He was going to be in so much trouble, even though it hadn't been all his fault at _all._

Mello's skin was warm, rough-smooth silk and scar tissue against his own skin, the light down of hair over his limbs softening a body that was hard and wiry and whip-tough. In the pale sunbeams that crept between the slats of the blinds, Mello's skin glowed.

His hair was backlit; normally in perfect array, the tousled tangled mess became a golden halo for his quiet, sleeping face, the one time that the frown or the smirk ever completely left it. Raw and sharp and impossibly tough - somehow all the things that made grown men and hardened criminals draw back in fear were the same things that made him fairer and truer than anything else in Matt's life, his entire being as keen and glittering as a knife's edge.

He was going to be in so much trouble, but for the life of him he couldn't tear himself away.

And wasn't that the way it had always been, with them? Mello was the instigator, the motive, the force, and Matt followed, both willing and helpless, even though he knew where it would lead. He'd never been able to resist Mello - and Mello knew that - and it wasn't fair, but that was the way it was. Mello was fascinating, dark and complex, burning and brilliant and straightforward as anything, hardheaded but with a heart that still gave at the right kind of pressure.

Even when Mello had left, asked Matt to be the watchman left behind, to wait for him to call - even when that call had taken six years - he'd waited. He'd followed when Mello had asked him to. He couldn't say no, and he couldn't walk away.

Sometimes Matt hated himself, but then Mello would walk into the room and he would forget why.

Mello was his opposite, the yang to his yin. Mello made impressions; Matt faded into the background. Mello did things, made plans, put them into furious action; Matt let the world flow by and act on him. He knew this. Mello was a brilliant light in the dim grey of Matt's twilight, and where they met they both faded into each other.

And maybe that was why last night had happened. Maybe they had looked in each other like a mirror and seen something there that had set off the storm. Maybe they had both been looking to be anchored, because god knew that Mello's only ties to reality, his only anchors, were through his opposites. Maybe -

Matt closed his eyes and tried not to think, because he was getting too close to the physicality of it all, the unspeakable _need_ of it - the way friendship had suddenly dissolved into something much deeper and more frightening the way that magnesium dissolves into water, spiralling and fizzing and whizzing completely out of control, and that's what it had been. Out of control, frantic, desperate, overwhelming, need, need, need, where touch meant as much as a thousand spilling words.

But why? Mello had been Matt's anchor for ages, his mirror, his opposite, his best friend, and this had never happened before. He'd had no idea that it ever could happen. If it was anyone's fault, it was Mello's, for instigating need with need.

But Matt was going to be the one who got in trouble for still being there when Mello woke up, as if taking a few extra moments of comfort from the only person he'd ever wanted human contact from was a crime, as if being there as a reminder of their mistake, their lapse in judgment, was a sin above all others.

What was he supposed to do? Just being around Mello would be a constant reminder of what they'd done, and he knew that. It wasn't something he would ever be able to erase from his mind.

The sunlight slid across his skin, joining them again with bonds of white light, transient but brilliant and pure. Matt watched it, watched Mello's sides rise and fall with his slow, steady breathing, his wild halo, his knife-edge beauty, and he prayed for Mello to sleep just ten minutes longer, just ten minutes...

Only ten minutes, that's all he would ask for, and then the sunlight would slide from their skin as Mello rolled away, seething and snappish, and after ten minutes he would get up and get dressed.

Ten minutes passed, and it turned out that Matt could make wrench himself away, if he forced it, and he began to slide regretfully away. He'd taken all he could ask for.

A hand gripping his wrist tightly stopped him, and he turned. Mello's face was buried in the pillow, hidden under an inscrutable curtain of hair, but it was his hand, black-nailed and white-knuckled, grasping his. "Ten more minutes," Mello muttered, almost inaudibly, and Matt stared at him, caught in silence, for a long, long moment.

Tug. "Stay." The word was breathed, barely articulated, but it was there and it was out and somehow, impossibly, Mello wasn't angry. Mello didn't want him to go.

Matt slid back down under the covers, and Mello didn't move, but he didn't pull away either, and his hand still had Matt's wrist caught tight. The sunlight was back across their forearms, joining them together, and Matt slid closer, until he could feel Mello's heart beating, and Mello didn't move, and the sunlight bound them and held them together in this one strange moment out of time.

-


	19. so won't you kill me so i die happy

_Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down_

Notes: This one basically wrote itself. I've had Matt's 'leviathan' moment before, so it was really easy to slip into his head.

-

He's hyper-aware of Mello. Long pale limbs framed with pitch-black, languid for once as he stares at the screen of the laptop, mop of perfectly shaped angel's hair a stark contrast to chains, zippers, buckles and leather. Mello is always warm - almost feverishly so, one of the reasons why he wears clothes that reveal so much skin - and Matt has always thought of it as his passions and the strength of his intentions burning within him.

Mello is half-draped over Matt, one hand on his shoulder propping up his chin; golden hair brushes Matt's temple as he tries very hard to concentrate on pressing buttons in precisely the right order to pull off one tricky combination move after another. He smells like leather, cocoa, copper, and it's an amazing combination, somehow intoxicating. They're not doing anything, not really; Mello is supposedly looking at the information they have gathered on Amane Misa and the second L, but Matt thinks he's probably just zoning out and staring at the screen. It's a rare moment of peace, of non-action. Life with Mello usually means you're constantly on the go.

Matt wants Mello to move so he can finish this level and save without being distracted. Matt wants Mello to stay like this, close and warm and comfortable. Matt wants this moment never to end, wants Kira to fade into insignificance, wants days of nothing in particular, just of being alive. Matt wants Mello, and the realization has always been with him, lingering just below the surface, occasionally rising like a leviathan to frighten the populace before sinking into obscurity once more. These moments are precious, sacred, where every little thing takes on gravity and meaning. He's been Mello's for a long time now, even if Mello doesn't realize it. That's OK. He'll still do anything for him.

He thinks it would be good to just kiss him, even just once, but he also thinks that it might be the last thing he ever does.

He's right in a way he never knew. When he goes to leave the apartment that day - January twenty-sixth, quarter to the hour because it takes exactly thirteen minutes to make it to NHN and he has to get there at the same time that Takada does - Mello stops him, not quite meeting his eyes, hand gripping his wrist so tightly that he thinks he's losing circulation. It hurts. Matt turns to stare questioningly. Then Mello is using his free hand to yank Matt's head in, and for a second their teeth clash together before Mello is kissing him fiercely. It's needy in a way that Mello never is, its meaning big, incomprehensible, fleeting. Matt is so surprised that he almost doesn't kiss back.

"If you screw this up I'll kill you," Mello says, pulling away after a breathless eternity, and then he's out the door. When Matt finally moves to follow, Mello is already gone.

-


	20. get away from the confrontation

_Buying Time - Great Big Sea_

Notes: After writing so many of these things, it's surprising to note that certain GBS songs are a surprisingly good fit for MxM. You wouldn't think that that band would get anywhere near Death Note. This one in particular helped tip the scales on that opinion.

-

He watched Mello sleeping and tried not to feel too creepy about it, but sleep was the only place where Matt could still see glimpses of the boy he'd grown up with, someone a little more disposed towards kindness and a bright smile. The scar on Mello's face was like a mask, taken off and relaxed at last, the stone of his glare softened into something human. He was still in there - Matt knew it. Somewhere behind the cold looks and sullen silences in the pauses in their deliberately light banter was the little blond brat who had terrorized Wammy's for years, the boy who'd spent those first few months hiding his spasming sobs in his pillow at night and hating himself for it, even after he'd learned that it was all right to mourn. He'd never been very good at remembering that.

Neither had Matt. But then Matt was a drifter, detached from the world, doing his thing and paying the rent, playing his games and letting the rest of the world go hang itself however it pleased. It had been his way of coping. Mello hadn't understood. Mello was all passion, and logic shot through with fire, so different, so impulsive, so dynamic, and he'd drawn Matt like a moth from their first meeting. Mello was the most real thing in his life; he supposed that meant he cared.

He cracked open the window, one eye straying back to Mello's face, serene in the neon light creeping in through the slats of the dirty blinds, and lit up, inhaling deeply, exhaling like a sigh.

So it had come to this. An ending of sorts, regardless of how senseless it seemed to Matt; surely there were less dangerous ways of doing this? But Mello had made up his mind and as much as Matt told himself that he didn't give a damn what happened now - that he never had cared how it all finally went down - he kind of... sort of... did.

Matt liked his life right now. There were boring things about it, yes. But it was pleasant, to hear his phone ring and know it was Mello on the other end, to hear a knock on the door and open it and have Mello walk in and collapse on the couch beside him. It was pleasant to have someone to tease and smile at and argue with. It was pleasant to have a screaming fight with someone and then have everything be back to normal fifteen minutes later, as though it had never happened. It was even pleasant to smell the mixed odd scent of ashes and chocolate in the apartment, a bittersweet addictive thing that, to Matt, had come to mean something almost like home.

It wasn't easy to distract Mello, but Matt's 'reconnaissance missions' with Mello and the car had never been turned down. His insistence on at least a couple wholesome meals a week could have them killing hours at a time in the grocery store, Mello looking terribly out of place leaning on the cart and attempting to be interested as Matt debated the difference with him between buying whole grain or white bread, two percent milk or skim. He'd made Mello go with him to the arcade a couple times, claiming terrible boredom and a desire to just hang out with Mello as they'd always done in the past. Anything but talking about what would happen when Mello could no longer be put off, and would tell him that it was time to go.

This morning, it had been Mello ordering him to hop on the back of the bike with him and go off on a mysterious errand. Matt had prepared himself for a couple of boring hours staring out a window at some people he didn't give a damn about, but they'd ended up in a park sitting on a bench, eating ice cream and watching the people go by, Mello insisting that any minute now Misa and Light - _Kira_ - would be coming by, on a date, and once they'd seen them they could safely break into NPA headquarters.

They'd never come, but the sun was warm and Mello was oddly relaxed, joking with Matt, cracking a smile behind his enormous sunglasses. Matt had thought it a little odd that the only thing leather on Mello that morning had been his motorcycle jacket. He looked good though, in the close-fitting black t-shirt and jeans, but then, Mello could probably make a paper bag look sexy. They'd watched the ducks, and made fun of the passerby, and the day had whiled away into late afternoon. Eventually Mello reluctantly acceded that their targets were probably not going to show up today now, and that they'd been wasting their time, but he hadn't sounded all that terribly upset.

Now Matt was wondering if Mello, too, hadn't been stalling for precious time. He inhaled, smoke tingling through him, and thought that maybe they were both holding their breath and praying that the last day would never come.

-


	21. and i'm quite aware we're dying

_Always - Blink-182_

Notes: I'm very, very, very slowly becoming a medical expert by writing pieces like this one and checking facts on healing times, survivable injuries, etc. Thanks Death Note! =D I'm an English major but if I keep this up I could be a doctor! Yeah, this piece is sort of weird, so I blame a combination of my brain on insomnia and too much time watching _Scrubs_ and _House_.

I also want to take this time to thank everyone for the favourites and author/story alerts I keep getting. It's good to know that the hits aren't just coming from people clicking and then surfing away, and it's nice to see that people seem to be enjoying these. So thank you all very much. You know who you are.

-

It had been a week since the fight that Mello had started, inadvertently, when he'd told Matt: "We're probably going to die."

His phone hadn't rung once since then. There wasn't much else to do, in these last few weeks, except watch, and wait, but it was so boring to watch and wait with nothing else to do. Mello was going to go crazy, pacing the hotel room alone. Flicking on the TV, flipping a few channels, flipping it off. Checking the laptops. Checking his email for any word from Matt. Checking his phone for messages from Hal or Matt. Pacing the hotel room, cursing at the walls. Flicking on the TV again, only to turn it off again minutes later.

Nothing new. Silence on all fronts. He was going to go insane.

How dare Matt walk out on him now? After all they'd been through, after all that had happened? Mello had forgiven him for errors he would have hurt or killed someone else for. Mello had called _him_ when he most needed someone he could trust, validating their old friendship, their old... whatever they'd had, something important enough that he couldn't put it in words, didn't want to.

How dare Matt just call him a crazy bastard and storm out on him? Didn't he know how hard Mello had tried to avoid this, how hard he'd tried to find some way of protecting him?

And still, silence.

When Mello couldn't take it any more, he hacked into Matt's personal laptop and broke into his email, fired up the program to track his cell phone and the last calls that had been made from it, and decided to break some ground tracking down his so-called friend.

There was a whole page of emails that Matt hadn't responded to, from the day he'd left until now. Matt either had a lot of junk or he led a very active online life, from the looks of things, but they mostly looked like alerts from gaming and programming forums telling him there were new posts in bookmarked threads. Nothing that would tell him where Matt was, from checking the contents of a few of the posts. Most of them were in jargon that could hardly even pass as English. Obviously he wasn't about to tell people, "Hey, I'm going to bugger off for a week to such-and-such a place, don't miss me," but there was always a chance that casual information might have been dropped.

He marked them all as 'read', and returned to the phone. It was off; had been off since three days ago, and Matt, the sly bastard, had put some sort of jamming chip on his phone that didn't interfere with the regular sending of messages and calls but did interfere with tracking so that it was impossible to locate him.

Mello cursed and swore until the call history had loaded, and he was distracted by one lone phone call that was not from his own cell and in the middle of a three-day period of absolute silence. He started off a search; there was just the number, no names of course, and who had Matt been contacting who wasn't Mello?

He was angry enough that he'd finished an entire chocolate bar by the time the search came back with an address listing and a name, and then he paused, bewildered, chocolate heavy on the roof of his mouth, cloying on his tongue, because why was Matt talking to a doctor?

Dr. Kamakura... wasn't that the head of a specialist medical centre fairly close by? He'd seen the sign as they drove past it before, he was sure of it. Why did Matt need to talk to a specialist? Matt had been showing flu-like symptoms for some time now, but he'd worked through them, insisting he was fine. Mello suspected he was downplaying how tired he was, but Matt had his pride, too, even if Mello often forgot that. What was going on? Why hadn't Matt told him anything? Fuming, Mello logged off Matt's account, shut the computer down, and opened his own phone. He was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed him.

He dialed the number of the centre, waited while it rang, and rang.

"Hello, this is the Kamakura Clinic, how may I help you?" came a friendly female voice.

"Hi," said Mello, and paused for a beat, collecting his thoughts. "I'm calling on behalf of one of the clinic's patients... I'm not sure when the last time he would have stopped by. Within the month, I know." That was a very safe bet; they'd only been in Japan for a month. "A Milo Jonson?" The false name that was on half of Matt's false ID; the other one he'd stopped using after he'd left the orphanage. "I need to confirm some of the details on his records. Do you have them with you, or do I have to speak to Kamakura-sensei?"

"We have his records, certainly," said the receptionist. "I can pull them up right now. What's your name, please?"

Mello hesitated. "Michael Keene," he said. His own false identity; if Matt was going to put down an emergency contact, that would be the name he would be most likely to put. Right?

"I'm sorry, I can't allow you access to that information about Jonson-san unless you're a relative or his legal guardian," the receptionist apologized.

"I'm on the form, though, right?" Mello demanded. "Michael Keene. I'm his roommate? Probably under emergency contacts? Doesn't that give me the right to verify his information?"

"You are on the form, sir, but it's not protocol to allow anyone who's not a relative or guardian to access any patient information."

"So I can know if he's dying and that's it?" Mello was infuriated. Petty bureaucracy - he wished it had never been invented. "I can't even be told what's wrong with him unless I come to an emergency room and he tells me himself right before he dies? How stupid are -? Look," he said, biting his anger back hard. "If there's anyone else on that form who has priority, please, tell me, and I'll get them to contact you instead."

Pause as the receptionist apparently perused the form. "...There's no one else," she said. "He left all of the relative slots blank."

"Right," said Mello, trying hard to remain calm. "And that is because his parents have been dead since he was three years old. He doesn't have a family. He doesn't have guardians. All he has is _me_, so just _listen_ for a few seconds. I'm the _one_ person in this world he can depend on, and if you continue to refuse to trust that information to someone without an official status, you're hurting him more than you're protecting him. He won't tell me what's wrong with him, and I need to know or he's going to hurt himself. I absolutely can't let that happen."

He stopped, took a deep, shaking breath, and bit his lip.

Because it was true.

All they had was each other. Matt had chosen not to trust him with this. Who knew what damage Matt was doing to himself by keeping whatever was wrong with him a secret? If he lost Matt, what did he have? Not much.

"Sir, please calm yourself," said the receptionist. "We were not aware of the circumstances."

"So you'll talk to me about his diagnosis?" Mello said immediately.

"Jonson-san needs to return to the hospital for an extended stay," said the receptionist quietly, and Mello's stomach dropped into his toes.

"Because...?"

"Because Jonson-san's test results show a decreased white blood cell count, low red blood cell count, and abnormal bone marrow." Her voice was calm but very earnest. "He's been showing classic symptoms for some time now. His condition is serious and needs to be taken as such."

Mello said, numbly: "Classic symptoms. Of what? What does he have?" even though in his heart of hearts, he thought he knew. Years of biology in Wammy's hadn't been for nothing, after all.

"Jonson-san has been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia," she said. "He could have a genetic predisposition to it; this aspect of the disease is often inherited. He hasn't told us whether he might have been exposed to certain types of radiation as a child. We were hoping he could provide us with some of his family medical history, at the least, but if he has been orphaned since that young age, there's not much we can expect. His condition is still treatable, if he allows us to act fast, but if he does not the disease may progress to the point where he will only have a couple of months left to live. He says he smokes... that certainly won't help him recover. We'd like you to try to convince him to quit. Also, you should know that while the drugs for the initial treatment are expensive, Jonson-san's insurance should cover a great deal of it."

Something shot through Mello's system like lightning, and suddenly the world began to make a lot more sense. Matt's withdrawal. Matt's anger blazing at him when he'd told him they'd probably die. Matt was trapped. He must have felt like a mouse in a cage, having to deal with the knowledge that his own body was trying to destroy him, and it wasn't hard to realize how he must have sensed the guillotine coming nearer when Mello had added in his own two bits.

Matt was dying anyways, and he hadn't told Mello.

_Why?_!

"Keene-san? Do you have any further questions?"

"... Thank you," Mello managed, throat dry. "Thank you, no, I'll do my best to get him to come in as soon as possible."

"Then thank _you_, Keene-san," the receptionist said. "I hope I was of service. Good day."

She hung up, as did Mello, sliding the phone slowly back into his pocket.

Matt was dying.

_No._

_No, that can't be right._

-

But the unbearable pacing and waiting became even worse with that knowledge sitting in the back of his mind, until at last he flung the phone at the couch and stormed off onto the balcony, prepared to eat chocolate until his mind went blissfully numb or he fell into a diabetic coma, whichever came first.

His phone rang half an hour later.

Mello tore the living area apart again before remembered he'd thrown it onto the couch, and he dove for it.

"Hello?"

Matt's voice sounded odd, thick and ragged, tired and miserable. "Mello, is it... OK if I...?"

"You idiot," Mello told him, feeling his eyes sting at the sound of Matt's voice, soft and beloved, at the sharp reminder that Matt was dying, that soon, if nothing was done, he would never hear that voice again. Ever. Not just phone silence for four years. Matt would be dead, and the grave would silence that voice, and he couldn't bear it. "You goddamn idiot, where have you been?"

"Out," Matt said. "Just... out, you know. Thinking."

"Thinking my ass," Mello retorted. "Matt, why didn't you tell me?"

Pause, then complete silence. "... Tell you what?" Matt said at last, cautiously. Nonchalantly, but Mello knew better.

"That you were already -" He couldn't say it. He couldn't say that word. He couldn't _tell_ Matt that he knew that soon, if everything went according to plan, they would both be in the ground regardless of what they did or how they did it, and he couldn't tell Matt that he knew their short lives were almost over, again. His hand was already shaking on the phone. "You should have told me," he said, and his voice cracked and he hated himself for that. "You should have told me you were sick."

Matt was silent. "Oh," he said finally. "That."

"_That?!"_ Mello yelled. "You talk about it like it's a cold, an ear infection, when you know as well as I do that - that -!"

"Mello," Matt said. "There's nothing we can do, is there?" Hint of a wry laughing sigh. "I'm a dead man walking whatever I do. I just needed to get out. Accept it. Understand that this is all of my future that's left. And I've done my thinking now."

"Matt, come back."

Pause.

"Please," Mello added, because this was important, because for all the times he'd pushed Matt aside in recent years, Matt was still important, more important than anyone, and he needed Matt to understand that.

"I'm definitely coming back," Matt said quietly. "I've decided that no matter what happens, I would rather die for Mello than for some stupid shit disease. So I'll come home to you again, Mello, tonight, and in a few weeks, we'll die to do what you need to do."

Mello felt a spark of warmth flare in the cold emptiness of his chest and belly. "...Home?" he said, in spite of that feeling that was telling him to leave well enough alone.

A low laugh from Matt. "What's the old saying, Mello?" he said. "For me, it's what's true. I'll see you in two hours, tops."

"... Home is where the heart is?" Mello said, bewildered, but Matt had already hung up, and the strange buzzing feeling that filled him wasn't going to have an answer until Matt got here.

"... Your heart is with me?" Mello murmured, and the buzzing numbness filled him until it was almost enough to block out the aching in his chest.

-

When Matt walked in the door an hour later, Mello got up from the couch. He got halfway across the room before Matt was standing there in front of him, expression odd and sheepish, arms spread slightly at his sides, the closest that he would ever come to asking for physical comfort, and Matt was lucky that Mello was terrified of losing him, or Mello would never have yanked him into the hug that he did, crushing him close against him like they were kids, like no one was judging them, like they were young and whispering their shy feelings to each other for the first time with no sense of any repercussions.

"Mello," Matt said, in the same tone that most people would say: _I'm home._

And Matt was lucky that Mello was the only person in the world there for him; he was lucky they were so close, he was lucky they had a history, he was lucky that Mello was tired of fighting, tired of acting brave in the face of overwhelming inevitability, tired of everything, wanting only to remain close to the one person he had left to him. Because Mello pressed his lips to Matt's as he hadn't done since they were kids, and Matt stilled in his arms for a long second, before raising his own hands to cup Mello's face.

"What are you doing?" Matt said, when Mello broke the kiss at last. He looked part amused, part afraid, part tender. "Don't you know that if you do this again you're going to start something you'll have to finish this time? Don't you know that we have no time left to start things over?"

"Yes," Mello said, and, "I don't care any more." Kiss, and Matt's mouth moved slowly against his own. "I just... I want to try, Matt. I want to know what it might have been like, if - I want to start something real. I want this, if you still do. Let me do this with you."

Kiss, kissing, dissolving into breathless pleasure, touch that glittered across nerves like lines of igniting fire, and touch shifted into purposeful movements. They slid to the floor together, still kissing, needing, needing, shoving clothes aside in an attempt to quench that burning need, kissing, holding, caressing, moving against each other, and it was something real, Mello knew, something that he'd never had good reason to be afraid of.

When they finished, Matt kissed him and breathed the words, "I always loved you, Mello," against his lips.

"I know," Mello said, buried his face in Matt's chest, thought about touch and need, and what should have been a slowly flowering, unwilted love, and: "I'm sorry."

-


	22. for the heart that never rests

_Something Beautiful - Great Big Sea_

Notes: For some reason, I really like the image of the church burning against the sunset. It keeps showing up randomly on me.

-

"I believe we'll be OK," Matt said, legs dangling off the edge of the fire escape, orange light glinting off the equally orange lenses of his goggles. He expelled a breath of smoke into the air, the grey cloud pinkening in the light of the setting sun.

Mello concentrated on cleaning his gun, rubbing away the dirt, smoothing the scratches, checking every part to make sure it was in proper working order. Black as night, as hell, even it gleamed in the dying light of day.

"Everything has to go off just right, tomorrow, Matt," he said. "Is there any part of the plan at all that you're uncertain about?"

"We've been over it a thousand times, Mello," Matt sighed, tapped his cigarette against the railing, watching the ash fall from the end, glowing, a falling, dying star. Watching, Mello found a shiver unaccountably working its way up his spine, felt a sense of foreboding. "What will be, will be, right?"

"You're sure." Mello set the gun down beside him, twisted his gloved hands around the bar in front of him, hearing the old metal creak under his touch. The railing, as a safety measure, wasn't much any more, frail and precarious, rusted away so that there was almost nothing between them and a five-story drop.

"At the end of the day, I'll come pick you up," Matt said. "And we'll ride off into the sunset together, like in those old spaghetti westerns we used to watch sometimes. Sound good?"

_I'm not going to have another sunset, Matt,_ Mello wanted to say, but couldn't. _You can come pick me up, but I'll be gone. This is the way it has to be._

_Why does it have to be so hard?_

"Sure," Mello managed. "Fine."

Matt inhaled one last time before he flicked his cigarette over the edge. "You don't think that's going to happen."

"Not really," Mello said, and leaned back, resting his weight on both of his hands.

"Mel."

Matt's arm dropped down around his shoulders; Mello tensed as Matt slid a bit closer. "It'll be all right," Matt said. "One way or another. I believe in you - I always have."

"I hope I'm worth it," Mello said.

"Even if you weren't, we still have to move forward," Matt said. "So I'll believe that at the end of tomorrow we'll have that sunset and our lives, and if we're lucky that's what we'll get, one way or another."

"I've forgotten how to believe," Mello said, quietly, and Matt's grip tightened momentarily around him.

"I haven't," Matt said. "And I think there's something more waiting, more things for us to do."

-

Bloody sunset, bilious yellow and grey, blood red and stained-glass orange, glitters of brass on rough grey pavement and blackened stone silhouetted against the sky.

One last sunset, heinous beauty in destruction -

Two souls released into the great unknown.

-

_He stretched out his hand and smiled. "Come on," he said. "I want to watch the sun go down."_

_The light crystallized, refracted and reflected in the blurring facets of the tears he'd fought so hard against, and Matt had been right, after all. They had to keep moving forward, and at the end of the day, they had the dying light and each other, and that was something that wasn't so bad at all._

_He breathed once more and flickered out. The fire burned against the darkening sky._

-


	23. for what it's worth

_Time of Your Life - Green Day_

Notes: Short song, shorter piece. Appropriate, I thought.

-

Matt was laughing as he walked out the door for the last time, and his last glimpse of Mello was a smile. That was rare enough these days, to be worth something special when the time of reckoning came.

Sure, he'd had to do some pretty terrible things, to stay by Mello's side. Sure, Mello had had to do some pretty terrible things just to survive and stay on top. That wasn't the important thing, nor was the twists and turns and unexpected crashes their lives had taken since they'd first met so many years ago. Good times, like all the stuff they'd used to do together when they were kids, like finding each other alive after so many years, like being the only one to reliably urge the other to smile. Terrible times - the explosion, running from the police, Mello's near-breakdown, screaming fights that inevitably ended in someone getting hurt. Mello was feeling the pinch of guilt now, for asking this of him; he'd seen it in his eyes, as they stood silent and awkward in the living room, glancing at the clock, waiting for their waiting to be over and done with.

_For what it's worth, Mel,_ he'd told his friend, wrapping his arms around him one last time, _it was all worth my while. _

This was just another turn on their unpredictable road, the last one before the dead end at the top of the rift dropping down into green shadows. Up there the view went on forever, Matt knew, and he was rather looking forward to reaching it with Mello at his side.

-


	24. walk within my poetry, this dying music

_Nightwish - Dead Boy's Poem_

Notes: When this song first showed up on my random music-fic list, I balked. It didn't look like there was anything I could do with it. And then I picked out the line "_my love letter to nobody," _and there was the piece. I like the idea of binary as Matt's peculiar way of expressing himself, even if I have little to no idea whether this is actually even plausible. It's... 'artistic', so NYEH.

-

_He writes everything in binary. Some of the teachers actually translate everything he hands in - that's just something to do with the nature of Wammy's, the nature of the people they hire there. Others just give up and either fail him, or assume he knows what he's talking about and give him full marks for everything. They hate him a little for it, and go on with their lives._

It's still a habit, years later, to translate everything important or extremely petty into binary, and as he stands here in the bright headlights of the circle of black cars he's thinking of Mello _(of course)_, his best friend, his only friend, the person he's going to die for _(because he -)_, and breathing out memorized strings of ones and zeroes _(- because he knew it would come to this)_.

_Teachers call him shallow, arrogant, a goof-off. Mello laughs his ass off when Matt shows him yet another piece of homework written in zeroes and ones, and says something like, "You're a freaking idiot genius, Matt. I can't believe you can get away with this." That's common; or perhaps, more rarely, "Somewhere under that dorky gamer-boy exterior beats the romantic soul of a poet," when it's something like an essay on criminal psychology written in rhyming iambic pentameter, buried under binary. Of course he'll still be laughing, but that's fine, that's good. Mello rarely laughs. Only Matt has that power over him._

He knows there's cameras on the dashboards of all police and security vehicles now that the world is Kira's. He faces the car closest to him, eyes trained on it, ones and zeroes flickering across his mind in loops and whirls, alien script elegant in its simplicity. It's music, it's words, it's fractal possibilities, it's anything he wants it to be. He hopes that this will be broadcast on NHN, broadcast to the entire fucking world, so that Mello sees it, last words, last breaths, last smile just as the guards pull the triggers of their guns all at once.

_To him, because of that, other words and ways become irrelevant, just overly ornate versions of his complex, simple language of possibilities._

Ones and zeroes fragment into the blazing air, pieces of a life ending in a defiance nothing like a poem - no famous last words for him, just a string of numbers spooling out their pointless end on the pavement. Only Mello might think to translate what he means, his last message sent out to no one with the desperate hope that it will reach someone as everything fades away.

"I'm not sorry. Get the bastard. I lov -"

0... 0... 0.

-


	25. reincarnation to explain our lives

_Rise Again - The Rankins_

Notes: I did it for the gender switch. Well, actually, in all seriousness, it was because I was trying to figure out what each of the three boys might believe in and I'd been doing some thinking on the subject for what direction each would take and why... After that: it was totally for the gender switch.

As a further note, this fic is _temporarily_ drawing to a close. I may be continuing with more altered circumstance shots later, or I may go back and start the whole cycle from the beginning. I plan to keep this open and incomplete, as a repository for all my musical one-shots and drabbles, but right now I am running out of ideas to go with the songs, so it may be awhile before I post again. Two more chapters to go - both alt-circ shots - and then I can't promise when the next update will be. Just to let those of you who are reading this know what's going on. I've had a lot of fun writing these, and I hope you enjoyed reading them. Thanks for the alerts and the faves, and to my small group of reviewers.

-

"What do you think there is after we die?"

"That's a rather morbid question, don't you think?" Near said from his spot on the windowseat with his Transformers. It was raining out; for once, there was peace between the three top students of Wammy's, as they were too bored and depressed with the weather to summon any amount of energy for fighting.

"No, seriously, what do you guys think?" Matt insisted, flopping over backwards onto the ground so he could look up at both Near and Mello, who was sitting at the table in the common room trying to read a book.

Near paused, considering this. "I don't think there's anything," he said, finally. "I think that what comes after we're dead is exactly like what comes before we are born and lasts for the same amount of time. Like falling into a dreamless sleep. We don't know what happens because we just end. And that's all there is to it. There's never been any definitive proof that there's anything else beyond this world, so I don't see any reason to believe in it. What we are is a physical thing, and so nothing remains behind when we die. When we die, we're gone, forever, and that's it."

"That's kind of creepy, if you think about it," Matt said. "Mel, what about you?"

"You know what I think," Mello grumbled from the depths of his book, gesturing to the cross hanging from his neck. "Heaven and Hell. Something in us that will go on long after our physical bodies die. Clearly there's something in each of us that makes us unique, and it demonstrates the continuity needed throughout one's life to suggest that it will last eternally as well. As moral beings, we should be judged and be judging our own actions at all times... it's our responsibility as human beings and God's children. So it follows that that won't end when we die, either; our worth will be judged, finally, and we'll know exactly where we stand. Stop bothering me, I'm at an important part."

Matt stared at the ceiling, a funny half-smile on his lips.

"So what do you think, then, Matt?" Near said.

"I think Heaven and Hell are comforting lies," Matt said, and Mello suddenly slammed his book shut to glare at him. "But I do think that there's something in us that goes on after death. What, I don't know. But it's like deja vu. Sometimes you remember things that you know you can't have seen or known before. So what I believe in, is reincarnation. We don't need Heaven and Hell because we travel from body to body. Somewhere, someone or something is being born all the time, and we might spend many lifetimes as something other than human before we come around again. And most of us forget. Remembering that much stuff over that many lives would be an enormous pain in the ass. But some things we remember. The people, mainly, which I think explains why we hate some people before we ever meet them, and how you can meet someone and feel like you've known them forever in a very short amount of time, why people still believe in love at first sight and soulmates."

"That's crap," Mello said.

"Conservation of matter and energy," Matt said. "It really does work."

"That only works if one thinks humans have souls," Near said. "I agree that conservation of matter and energy may indicate that many of the elements that make up you today may some day be part of a great tree in the forest, and the energy that is yours today may belong to a rabbit one day, but the rest of it..."

"For once," Mello said, "Near and I agree."

Matt stuck out his tongue at them, then sat up and went back to his game.

-

At thirteen years old, Madison Jefferson didn't understand why, when the new girls, the vivacious blonde and her mousy little fraternal twin sister, walked into her seventh-grade classroom and introduced themselves as Melanie and Natasha, respectively, she couldn't take her eyes off them.

And she had no idea why she walked up to them at lunch and sat down beside them, asking questions, introducing herself, and generally being just sunny and polite. It felt, she was sure, almost like she'd known them both before, somewhere, sometime, but of course that was ridiculous; she'd never met either of them in her life.

There were a lot of things about her life that didn't make sense, such as a craving for cigarettes every now and again even though she'd never smoked in her life, and a natural talent for video games that bewildered her four older brothers. So when she saw Melanie munching contemplatively on a chocolate bar, she found herself thinking: _Yes, that's absolutely right,_ and didn't understand it for a moment, and she was perfectly OK with that.

The day she discovered that she had a crush on Melanie didn't totally come as a surprise either, and when Melanie cornered her, and demanded to know how she'd known what her favourite brand of chocolate was and why exactly was she buying her her favourite brand of chocolate anyways, it was with utmost honesty that Madison said: "I don't know."

"Well, anyways," Melanie muttered, tossing her hair over her shoulder, looking faintly pink. "It's still weird, but... thanks."

Madison grinned foolishly at her. "You know what I think?" she said.

"What, Madison?"

"I think we must have known each other in another life," she announced, and Melanie rolled her eyes. "No, really. I have this enormous urge to say 'I told you so,' and I don't know why."

Melanie's eyes widened, then softened. "You're still full of bullshit, Mat -" Caught herself, bewildered. "Madison," she corrected herself, but she was staring at Madison now, and there was something like curiosity and respect in her eyes. "But maybe you do have a point."

"Is this a point we could discuss over ice cream in the park after school?" Madison said eagerly, and Melanie gave her a strange look, and then smiled, almost sweetly.

"Sure."

-


	26. alone

_The Future's Always Alone - X/1999 OST_

Notes: This was also supposed to be part of a larger fic, but I'm not quite sure what the purpose of that larger fic would be or how to end it, so for now this is a stand-alone. To set the scene: Near knew Mello's plan, and Mello took advantage of the knowledge that he would owe him big if it worked out to demand that Matt be picked up if he got into trouble. The church went up in flames, Matt was still shot, but he was reached in time to save his life. And so on and so forth.

This takes place during the healing period, when Matt's being kept at the SPK's building because he has nowhere else to go. The lollipops are there because the doctors issued an ultimatum about his smoking, and he needed another oral habit to ease the transition.

Warning: Altered circumstances; language.

-

Hal came to see him one-on-one for the first time. When Matt heard the knock on the door that evening, he expected Near, or perhaps Gevanni, maybe even Lester even though Matt knew the big blond man had gone home for the night already, but he had not expected Hal. She had... well, she wasn't avoiding him, because she didn't leave when Matt came into the room and if he asked her a question, she would answer, but there was no personal connection, no willing interaction. Even the others, to a variety of small degrees, were willing to interact with him. What did she want?

He stared at her standing at ease outside his door, expression bland and unreadable as she looked at him. She was a beautiful woman, Matt knew, Mello's old contact within the SPK, and a surprisingly good player of one side against the other. Her goal had been to see Kira caught no matter what. 'No matter what' had included Mello living in her bathroom for awhile, before he'd tracked down Matt in New York again and changed his life for... was it the fourth or fifth time? Maybe the sixth or seventh? No matter. Mello's presence guaranteed drastic change. That was all.

Looking at her now, Matt could understand a lot more than he wanted to about those days. Looking at her, he discovered something unpleasant about himself: he was jealous. Hal had been more central to Mello's plans - apparently more central to his life - than he had been. Matt was just an afterthought, someone he could tell to do what he wanted out of old loyalties and friendship, the dirty tasks that he couldn't get anyone else to do. He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't.

"We should talk," Hal told him, quietly.

"All right," Matt said, agreeably, reached into his pocket for another lollipop, discarding them until he found the sourest one he could. "Talk."

"Can I come in?" she said. "This isn't a conversation I think that either of us will want to have in the hallway."

Matt grudgingly let her in, and she closed the door behind them while Matt moved to the comfort of his bed. Hal took the one chair in the room and sat, looking serious.

"I wanted to apologize," she said. "I've been... disliking you pointlessly for awhile now. Avoiding talking to you unless I had to. I'm sorry, Matt."

Matt stared, then tried a flippant smile. "You're allowed to not like me, you know. I know I'm rakishly handsome and geekishly cute with a fantastic personality and all, but really, it's OK if you don't agree."

"Please don't be sarcastic," Hal said. "This isn't a joke."

"I wasn't totally joking," Matt told her. "Actually, I'm kind of glad that you've been disliking me." He closed his eyes to her bewildered expression. "It makes me feel better about admitting to the... the jealousy."

"Jealousy...?" It was Hal's turn to stare at him in bewilderment. "What do you mean? Are you talking about -" Her eyes widened suddenly, and then she said, "Oh, Matt," and there was compassion there in her voice now. "Because of Mello?"

"I don't talk about it," Matt said tightly. "Or him. He's dead, it's over."

"It's not over," Hal said. "You haven't forgiven him for dying, have you? Or for... for working with me?"

"There are a lot of things I can't forgive him for," Matt said.

"Matt, do you want to know why I've been disliking you?"

Matt shrugged.

"Because after I stopped being the only one he could depend on - after he contacted you, in other words - I never actually saw him face to face again until the day he died. We talked over the phone - that was all. I kept wondering who the hell you were, to take so much of his attention." She looked at Matt, sidelong, as though expecting an answer. It didn't show on her face, but the tone of her voice said that she didn't understand why a skinny lazy hacker who tended to disappear in the background could hold the eyes and confidence of someone like Mello for anywhere near as long as Matt had. "I never did find out."

"We grew up together," Matt said, and stared at his hands. It was hard, to think about Mello, but he would have to, eventually. He wasn't stupid, after all. "I was one of the few people he tolerated even then. I'm still not sure why. He knew he could trust me to back him up, I guess. He called me a couple times, over the years after we left the orphanage, to come help him out, and I did. In Los Angeles, a couple times. Before that, in Vegas. Chicago. New York. London... Hell. He always... always made life more interesting. We... were friends."

Hal nodded, apparently satisfied, and then said, "I asked him, once, about you, and he told me to piss off. He was protecting you even then. And I was the one who passed the message on to Near, about picking you up." Her beautiful face twisted, angry at herself. "I was... I don't even know how to describe it, when Mello explained his plan to make sure you would be taken care of once it was over, once he was dead. It was so stupid. I didn't want to pass it on, I wanted to let you fend for yourself."

"I told you," Matt said. "It's all right. I'd hate me too, I'm sure, in your position. I kind of hate myself a little right now."

"I don't hate you," Hal said, eyes clear and earnest meeting his own. "I think I understand you a little more, now. That's why I came to apologize."

Matt said nothing.

"You cared very much for Mello, didn't you?"

"He was my friend," Matt repeated, and kept his face like stone.

"I resented him at first," Hal said. "When we first met in New York a few years ago. He was an uncontrollable asshole and it took me a long time to see past that."

"See past that?" Matt said, bitterly amused. "You must have had to look pretty deep. Even I had troubles, at times, and I knew him from when his damn inferiority complex was just starting to form. He wanted power and respect and he didn't give a damn about anyone unless they were willing to give him a hand upwards, then he'd abandon them when he'd finished using them. I knew Mello, Ridner. Probably better than most. There wasn't much nice about him, after L died."

"He was scared," Hal said.

"Mello wasn't scared of anything," Matt told her.

"Of never being good enough," she finished. "It wasn't just anger at losing to Near all the time. He had this... ideal vision of what he should be in him, and he was always terrified that he wasn't living up to it, that he wasn't doing things right. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. I know fear, Matt, better than most. He was angry, yes, but it was because of the fear. The fear had the deeper roots."

Matt had trouble believing that, but then, Mello was a consummate actor when he wanted to be. Matt had been taken in enough times by him even when he had the feeling that he was being false. Maybe... Maybe Hal had a point.

"I couldn't deal with him most of the time," Hal said. "But I could deal with the fear. He made up plans off the top of his head, too, didn't he? He ran on adrenaline and quick wits and an enormous momentum, and he made it all up as he went. I... I felt for him, you know. I wished I could support him better, but he didn't want me to. Most people would go crazy, living like that for as long as he did."

"He was kind of crazy," Matt said. "There were days when he was absolutely fucking nuts. Most of them he spent tormenting me."

"He trusted you to keep him sane," Hal said instantly.

"That's ridiculous," Matt said, even as his throat closed up at the thought. Mello, depending on him like that? Impossible.

"But it's true," Hal said. "If he disappeared for a few days after a blow-out over the phone, I knew he would come back calmer, more stable. If I asked what he'd been doing, he'd tell me to piss off. Once when he was almost... open, he told me he'd been with a friend who was helping him. He only ever told me to piss off when it had something to do with you. Otherwise, it would be a calm 'that's irrelevant to the plan' or something of the sort."

"Shit," said Matt, and dropped his head into his hands. "Shit. And all this time I was... I was so.... I hated that you were SPK, because that made you part of his obsession with Near. Near's not a bad kid, but I hated the way that Mello would obsess over him, how everything was always about Near and being better than him. He could have... he could have done anything he wanted, just by being himself, but he couldn't let himself or else he didn't want to. I don't know. I just wanted to hit him somedays, and tell him that his obsession was going to kill him one day and that it would all be for nothing."

"You cared very deeply for Mello, didn't you?" Hal said, quietly, for the second time.

Matt didn't say anything, just sat there and breathed, feeling the freedom that came from speaking his mind fully for the first time in months. He wasn't jealous of Hal any more. She too knew what it was to lose, and hate irrationally, and they'd both cared about Mello other than as a working partner. And Mello was dead. He could finally speak his mind about this one thing and not be afraid.

"I'm an idiot," Matt told her, "because I loved that fucking screw-loose asshole like crazy."

He couldn't read Hal's expression properly. He wasn't sure what she was thinking, and then her peculiar expression was hidden behind her usual calm mask.

"Mello did his best to protect your identity and keep you out of the limelight," Hal said quietly, and one hand reached out to cover Matt's. "He went to you for his sanity and he all but ordered Near to watch out for you at the end. I think that's Mello-speak for 'the feeling's mutual.'"

Matt wanted to believe that, but he couldn't.

-


	27. just want you to know who i am

_Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls_

Notes: See previous chapter. Set during the same fic. I can't figure out a way to end it properly, but I liked these two sections, so I thought I might as well share. Also, just want to let you guys know once again that I really appreciate all the favourites and alerts. They make me very happy! I'm working on more of these and will start the cycle of time over again once I have enough. I can't guarantee any posts in the recent future, but with my summer vacation coming up, I'll have lots of spare time after work for writing, and I plan to do so to the fullest extent of my abilities.

Warnings: Altered circumstances; language.

-

"Hey," said Matt, one day, when Near came to see him. He seemed to be involved in his video game, lollipop being rolled about in his mouth apparently taking up the rest of his concentration. "L was buried in Japan, right?"

"Yes," said Near. It was a strange question, but Near was more surprised that Matt had not asked it before. L had been such a large part of their lives, though they'd never met him, had hardly any physical proof that he was a real person, that it would seem strange to not show curiosity on the subject. But then, Matt hadn't had the same drive that he and Mello had had. Matt simply did not care about L in the same way.

"Where?"

"There's a graveyard by a shrine near this park," Near said, "the one where you go walking every day."

"I want to see."

Stranger still, but Matt had been restless lately, and perhaps seeing L's grave would give him some form of closure on the Kira case, on Mello's death and violent cremation, someone to talk to that would not talk back or accuse him of being unreasonable. It made sense, in an odd sort of way. But if it was what Matt wanted... well, a little healing purgation of emotion might be the best way to get him back in working order once more.

"Very well," Near said, finally, tugging Matt's hand over to him and pulling a marker out of his breast pocket, carefully writing the address and the name of the park on his hand. "If you go here... I don't remember exactly where the grave was located, but it was near the back of the lot. Newer deaths, you understand. You know the year he died; he should be in the 'unknown' section. His grave says 'Ryuuzaki' on it."

Matt examined the back of his hand, marred by those thick black lines, and Near couldn't tell what he thought. "Thanks," he said, and pulled his hand back, clenching it into a fist. "I'll be going, then."

"Don't be too late," Near said quietly, as Matt limped past him out of the room, and hoped Matt understood that even if the people he'd lived for weren't here, there were still people left who wanted him to be all right.

-

Matt found the grave under a tree, a weeping willow. Someone had been there recently, leaving an offering of cake, from a popular Tokyo bakery, in a box, and Matt leaned against the tree, wondering if it had been Near or a member of the Japanese task force who had come to visit. It was interesting to see that the great detective had not been forgotten.

He slid down to sit on a root, absently sucking on a lollipop, just looking at the characters carved into the stone for a long, long time, eyes tracing every line, analyzing every angle, calculating every curve. They'd used Japanese; all that was on it was the name, Ryuuzaki, and the date of death. They hadn't known anything more. L had been too good to leave anything more behind.

Still, it must be lonely. To have died so far from home, to be buried alone, to have no one remember him or his real name or anything about him.

He could understand that much.

"You ruined my life," Matt told the gravestone, and dropped his lollipop wrapper into the grass at the base.

"You and Wammy gave us a home, somewhere we could be almost normal, where we could be with other children like us. I was always grateful for that. I met a lot of people that I liked there, people like me. I met Mello. I've been happy, at times, because of what you've done for us. But it wasn't for nothing. You used us. You made us obsessed. Every child there wanted to be like you, to risk danger, to abandon friends and home, and everything, and live like you, alone, nothing but an analytical mind with its little eccentricities to maintain a grip on reality, and it ruined us."

He took a deep, steady breath, unwrapped another lollipop, and stuck it in his mouth, sucking thoughtfully for a moment before going on.

"Near doesn't know what it's like to be human. He sits and he does puzzles and he solves cases, socially retarded and with no concept of the larger world except as the most complex puzzle there is. Mello almost went crazy, trying to be you. Mello _died,_ for your sake, to be the best and do what had to be done, just like you. He was twenty-one, he had a whole fucking lifetime ahead of him, and he went and died because you would have thought it necessary_. _

"And me? I never wanted to be you, and you still rubbed off on me. I'm agoraphobic - better, now, but it's still painful at times - I'm anti-social, I relate to the world only through my games and my addictions, and you ruined my life that way, and again when your memory took Mello away from me."

He bit the candy in his mouth in half, feeling the shards sharp against his tongue and the sides of his mouth as it shattered. It hurt, the edges dissolved down to razor-sharp thinness, sour and sweet and horrible all at once. Like life, like love, like going on. He missed his nicotine. He missed burning with it, exhaling his soul away with the smoke.

"I loved that crazy fuckhead, you know. I had no one else, but I had him, and that was OK. We kept each other human. I wanted to think - I wished that I could be enough to anchor him, but when it came down to it, your influence was stronger, you had the tighter hold, and it killed him. I hate you for doing that. I hate you for seeing him only once, while I spent almost every day beside him, thinking of him, doing things for him, and you still had more power to take him away. I hate you. Not that it matters to you any more."

Matt sat there, trembling, as what he'd been saying struck home. He wondered if it would have affected L, if he'd heard what he'd just said before he died. Would he have been sorry? Would he have told him that it was simply part of the game, of trying to win?

"I refuse to be Watari," he said aloud, finally. "Near expects me to, to take over that role and help him be the next L. I won't. Maybe I would have, if it was Mello who won, or maybe I wouldn't have. I'm done with it. I'm done with everything. I don't care any more. I don't know why I ever did. I won't be Watari and I won't help groom kids for the next generation of L, I won't be part of Near's research team, I won't, I won't, I won't. I'm going to live my own damn life and try to make it worthwhile, since Mello didn't want me to die. There had to be something to that. You can't have a hold on me any more. We're through, L. I won't think for your sake any more.

"Thanks for everything," he added, "and nothing." He got to his feet, stretching, and then he walked away. It was already starting to grow dark. Near would probably be wondering if anything had happened to him.

The graveyard was still empty of the living. Matt spat out his last stick and unwrapped another, sticking it in his mouth and wincing at the sweetly sour flavour. God, he hated the things. He hated the graveyard too; if it hadn't been for Near, this was where he would have ended up, six feet under with a shiny headstone over him. Probably buried somewhere near "Ryuuzaki", with only his code name and the date of his death on it as well. An empty fate.

The smog was lowering out of the sky, now that the world was cooling down for the night. The smell made his lungs hurt; it was probably as bad to be out here in the pollution at this time of day as it was to keep smoking. He needed to hurry back before his lungs recollapsed or something. There was a door out the back way; Matt could walk faster down the streets than he could across grass, with his limp. He headed down the sidewalk, body aching from the unaccustomed exertion and emotional rollercoaster of talking to all that was left of L.

When he got back, he stopped in the observation room and watched Near building with his Lego for awhile before he headed off to bed. Near knew he was there, though his glance did not once flicker in his direction; his hair twirling had stopped for a moment as Matt had entered the room silently. Matt watched him, wondered what it was like to live under all that pressure, to deal with being the best, with having all those eyes on you all the time, watching, waiting for you trip up, expecting you to solve every problem with ease and mental agility.

He lay awake for a long time that night, looking at the ceiling and the patterns that the moonlight and streetlights made on it, tracking movements and the curve of lines with his eyes, not thinking, just watching, but he was restless still and he didn't think any of his normal habits would bring him comfort.

-


	28. what causes an angel to love a fool

_Stumbling In - Great Big Sea_

Notes: I struggled with this one for a long time, because as many ideas as these lyrics gave me, I just couldn't get it to work properly. I probably like this version best, but I'm still not completely satisfied with it. Notice that I went back and actually played with an idea about Matt that I had in the last installment of the old cycle. Pre-relationship stuff. Also, it is very tempting to write longer fic with this one. It'd be a nice change because all my (unposted) longer fic is basically AU shit. Lemme know what you think, as per usual.

-

Matt had all of the natural grace of a cat thrown into water. That was one of the many reasons why he chose to stay in his room, curled in his windowseat, watching the kids playing games in the yard below him. It was embarrassing to be so uncoordinated in an athletic situation.

Another reason was that fresh air and open spaces made him shrink in on himself, made him feel small and insignificant and start to hyperventilate.

It was too bright; it messed with his vision to go into the sunlight, even with his tinted goggles pressed firmly over his eyes.

He was allergic to pollen and mold, which cut the time where he could actually go outside and not have a sneezing attack to late autumn, early spring, and full winter.

Last, it was nicer to watch the boys at play from a distance. Close to, he would give himself away, because there was one boy whose every movements he followed with his eyes, and knowing he was watched would either make him trip and screw up, or get angry at Matt for staring, or a bit of both. He couldn't help himself.

Mello was special.

Mello had all the natural grace of a stalking cat, even when he was running full-tilt. He made Matt think of something long and lean like a cheetah, eyes fixed on his prey. His muscles shifted under smooth skin, and he changed directions as easily as thinking. When he walked, every step was effortless and confident. When he levelled his gaze at you, you were caught, trembling, by it, daggers of ice piercing into you and pinning you in place, revealing everything - all in one glance. And then he would pass, and the recepient of his gaze would fall back against the wall, watching him helplessly, admiring and wanting at least a little.

Matt wasn't stupid. He knew he wasn't the only one who looked at Mello, although he was pretty sure that Mello didn't even notice anyone who did. Mello had eyes only for Near, the little albino in the same year as Matt, the little albino who was the smartest boy at the institute and the one whispered to be most likely to succeed L, and Mello heard those whispers and reacted fiercely to them.

Mello never heard the other whispers where everyone agreed, behind Near's back, that even so Mello was probably the one better suited for the action-oriented position, because Mello cared about justice as much as winning - the latter of which was all that Near seemed to care for.

Matt wasn't stupid, even if his chosen field of study was too unofficial to ever put on the books. He listened. He watched. No one paid attention to him; after all, he was only an asocial gaming nerd who never paid attention in class and didn't seem at all interested in succeeding L, and that gave him the invisibility he needed to continue his preferred studies.

Everyone said that Mello was unpredictable because he didn't make plans, he simply _did_ things. He had watched Mello long enough to detect the pattern, to guess at the methods that Mello would turn to in a given situation, to know that when Near was involved his reactions were limited to 'treat coldly and glare' and 'work even harder to beat him, no matter what.' He knew that when Mello lost at something, he would leave the House and its grounds at a run, burning energy and frustration. He knew Mello hated looking like an idiot and would use any means to prevent appearing like one.

He knew Mello truly smiled only when he thought no one else could see, too proud to show when he was simply happy without any need to smirk or be derisive. Matt had seen his smile, fleeting and strangely soft, and felt blessed to have seen something that hardly anyone else ever had.

He knew a lot about Mello, so when Roger gathered the older orphans together and asked them to please put their resources together to help him find Mello, who had disappeared for no apparent reason a few days before his thirteenth birthday, he knew he was probably the only one who could find him.

"Leaven, what do you have that might help us find him?"

"I can hack into the security files and access all the information from the cameras and sensors, see if anyone has changed the data."

Matt had already done that, several times before, for both instances. He wasn't particularly impressed.

"Tober, what about you?"

"I know everyone he hangs out with on a regular basis and I can go ask them questions, pinpoint the last time and place he was seen."

So did Matt. Not that he needed to; he'd seen Mello run out the main door, and the look on his face told him that something, somewhere, sometime, had happened to make him doubt his abilities, made him feel insignificant next to Near, and he'd gone to seek refuge, probably in one of his favourite hiding places. It was a common enough occurrence, though he'd never disappeared for this long before. He knew there were only so many places that he would have gone; it was simply a matter of checking them to find out which one it was.

"Archer?"

Shrug. "Let him stay lost. I don't want to help."

"Near?"

"Mello will come back when he's ready to come back, and not a moment before. I do not think there is a person in this room who could convince him to come back any sooner."

"Matt?"

Silence. Roger frowned, and turned from Near.

"Oh, where is that boy? Wasn't he just in here a moment ago? He must have left with Archer. Well, never mind, boys, please go and at least try to find out where Mello is, even if you can't get him to return right away. We can't have students going missing like this."

-

Mello was worthless and he knew it.

He buried his face in his arms and tried to pretend that he didn't feel the tears pricking at his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to do what he wanted to more than anything. He couldn't beat Near. He couldn't make L notice him before anyone else. He couldn't stand apart the way he wanted to.

Mello wasn't stupid, and he knew that too. He simply wasn't quick or smart enough. But neither was he blind. He knew he stood apart to the other orphans; knew he was watched by many and his efforts a benchmark to be matched, but it wasn't the same and he never measured up. He heard their whispers, that Near was the one favoured for succeeding L, and it made him work even harder.

No one understood. No one got his drive; no one could deal with his obsessive need to be the best. Many people watched him, boys and girls alike, some with more understanding in their eyes than most, others with more blind, dazed, crushing admiration, but none were people he wanted to be around, to single out and call a friend.

No, there was one, but Mello had only caught him watching once.

The redhead - Matt - he was special.

Matt was one of the strangest people he knew. He didn't try, not in class, not in homework, never in sports, even if his IQ put him at a level almost on par with Mello himself. He had no drive to be noticed. He was content to sit in a corner and watch everyone else, to sit alone at supper, to hide in his room whenever he wasn't in class. He probably knew more about everyone and everything at Wammy's House than anyone else. Matt watched him, he knew; other people had noticed, he'd heard them whispering about it, even if Mello had only caught him that one time, and looked back until Matt had blushed, and looked away.

Matt was too busy watching everything to look where he was going. Matt had no natural grace. He wasn't particularly handsome. There was not much about him to catch anyone's eye, and yet... and yet, after noticing Matt noticing him, it was hard not to keep noticing him. There was a strange elegance in the way his hair fell over his eyes, in the way he absently brushed it aside when it was interfering with his vision. There was a mystery about him, contained somewhere beyond the barrier formed by his ever-present, ridiculous goggles. There was something about his passiveness that told Mello that unlike Near, Matt was someone who was simply waiting for the right chance to act on all the knowledge he possessed, instead of trying to avoid it.

No one else really noticed Matt; Mello was willing to bet that he'd seen more of the reclusive boy than anyone else, just from watching him watching everyone. Matt was a secret that could be his alone, if he wanted, something that Near could never understand or have. That was worth something, even if Matt had no interest in him beyond the most general one.

He heard footsteps, and buried himself deeper under the hollow nest of roots of the tree, held still, but the footsteps stopped some distance away. Mello heard someone sit on the ground, settle down. Heard that person sigh, then speak.

"I know you'd prefer to be alone," he said, and it wasn't a voice that Mello was familiar with. He pulled himself up out of the hollow and rested his chin and hands on the top root, kneeling in the dirt, looking at the boy who'd found him about fifteen minutes after Roger would have started panicking and getting kids to search for him. Red hair fell over expressionless goggles, colour and reflection hiding his eyes effectively. He was tracing one finger idly through the dirt, hunching in on himself, not looking up. "And I know you don't want to talk right now. But if you could listen? That's all I'd ask."

Mello said nothing. Matt's breath was short and very rapid; he sounded as though he were terrified, but he kept talking.

"All Near cares about is winning," Matt said. "He has nothing else. Finishing the puzzle. Winning the game. That's it. That's his life. I know you hate him. Since he always beats you. If you want the truth. I hate him as well. He makes you feel worthless. And you're not."

Mello said nothing. Matt's hands were shaking. He pulled them in, wrapped his arms around himself, shivering, but kept talking.

"You're better than him," he said, and Mello felt his eyes widen. "You don't hear it, I know you don't. But everyone wants you to be the one who gets L. Everyone thinks Near will probably be the one that gets it. But they want it to be you. People like you. People want to trust you. Want you to like them. That's more valuable than sitting in a room and solving puzzles without human evidence. So what if he beats you sometimes? He's not the one who goes out and uses what he learns. That's why. Everyone wants you to win. I - I want you to win. I think you're a very special person. I -"

Matt tipped forward, all but hyperventilating, eyes locked on the ground now only a few inches from his face, and Mello suddenly understood. Matt never came outside. Matt always stayed in the corners when he had to be in a large room with lots of people. Matt was deathly afraid of open places and too many people, and yet he'd walked outside, down the path, all the way out here, just for his sake. Just to tell him that he didn't think he was worthless.

He went to Matt's side, dragged him to his feet. Matt whimpered, and his legs buckled, eyes squeezing shut. He reached up, locked his hand behind Matt's head, twined in surprisingly soft hair, and brought it down to his shoulder, put his hands on either side of Matt's face like blinders so he couldn't see. Matt's breathing hitched, began to lengthen again, and Mello felt the feverish warmth of his forehead against the skin revealed at the neck of his sweatshirt.

"Thank you," he said, finally, brushing aside his bangs with his thumbs, and Matt's shoulders shuddered as he expelled hot air against Mello's chest. His hands came up, curled tightly around Mello's wrists, and when Mello guided him back into the encircling roots of the hollow space under the tree, Matt followed him trustingly, blindly, and managed to stay calm when Mello finally pulled away to look at him better.

Tears were pooling behind his goggles; Mello reached out and pushed them upward to catch them falling from his cheeks, and Matt's eyes were dark blue-green even in the dim cool shade under the tree, wide and open as a book. Mello read his fear there, his determination, the utter selfless devotion that met his curious gaze; all that was invisible behind the lenses. He caught his breath. Without his goggles - tearstains, goggle-marks and all - there was a certain awkward beauty to him. Without his goggles, Matt's face told him that of all the people he watched, Mello was the only one he would have gone this far for.

"Matt," he said, and Matt's gaze was steady, hands cold in his, and what was this feeling rising in him? He didn't know. He just knew that it felt good to press his lips to Matt's damp cheek, to feel him shudder under his touch, and maybe Matt was right after all. Maybe sometimes there were more important things than winning.

Still. This felt like a victory of sorts all on its own.

-


	29. come away o human child

_Stolen Child - Loreena McKennitt_

Notes: I'm ridiculously in love with the way that this artist turns poetry into music. I'm also ridiculously in love with fairy-tale language and repetition of words/phrases/images like a magic spell. And yes, I spell it 'faery' not 'fairy' because I prefer the older English version, regardless of whether it is modern and correct. On another but final note: holy shit reviews, thank you so much!! I hope my new cycle will still be enjoyable to you guys. And with no further ado, the piece.

Warnings: UST. And possible death-of-author due to who I labelled as the faery. I don't think he'd be too pleased with me if he knew.

-

He was alone in the field when the faery came for him, stepping lightly over the rows of waving corn, hair like cornsilk, eyes bluer than the cloudswept skies that hung over them. It was threatening to rain. The air was thick and humid around them, so that he felt twice as heavy as he normally did.

"Have you made your decision?" the faery said, balancing on the tip of a cornstalk, body seemingly made of air.

"My family," he said. "I don't want them to miss me."

"I know of a spell that can make it as though you never existed to them," said the faery, and his smile crept slow and organic across his face like ivy. "And you will have me. What other family do you need?"

"My friends," he said. "They'll wonder where I've gone."

"For a little while," the faery said, and sprang down to the earth beside him. "I know of a spell that alleviates all wounds and griefs. And you will have me. What other friends do you need?"

"My job," he said. "I have responsibilities, where will they find someone to replace me on such short notice?"

"They will," the faery said. "For I know of a spell that will set all things moving on their way as though you never were. Come with me."

"I can't," he said. "I love this world too much."

"Your world is our world too," the faery said. "Only deeper, and more real. Come."

He hesitated.

"You want to," the faery said, and touched airy hands to his suddenly warm cheeks. His eyes were narrow and gleaming, slits of sky hidden under lids of golden skin. "You want to be free in the world with me, needing no one and nothing else, wanting no one and nothing else. You know you want to follow me. You know you will follow me."

"Yes," said the boy, and the faery smiled, and took his hand in his, and together they faded away into mist. After awhile, rain began to fall, and washed his footprints away. Lightning flickered along the distant horizon, and thunder rolled like a wave across the fields...

"_Matt, pay attention!"_

Matt jolted out of his dream with a start, to find the class laughing at him. Face burning, he buried his face again in Yeats and wondered why in the world it was important to study poetry. He couldn't think of anything more boring or useless.

His gaze drifted towards the window, losing interest in the text. Mello was out by the track with his gym class, and as much as Matt hated the too-bright light at this time of year, and any form of physical activity that was 'organized' to be 'fun,' he wished he was out there with Mello, if only to sit on the sidelines and watch him run like the wind, lean legs flashing white under too-large gym shorts, hair catching wind and sun equally.

He made it through the class somehow, and trudged outside after to catch a breathless Mello on his way back in from gym. Sweat made his hair cling to his face, and little beads slid down his skin to collect on the hollows and smooth plateaus of his face and neck.

"You look sleepy," Mello said. "Fall asleep in English again?"

"Poetry," Matt said, one word eloquent enough in tone to describe his long conflict with the entire art form.

Mello grinned. "You should have taken gym with me," he said, and Matt was inclined to agree, as Mello slid one hand through his hair to lift it from his damply glistening neck before nudging Matt with one elbow. "Good dreams, at least?"

"Weird ones," Matt said, and bit the inside of his lower lip to remind himself not to press his lips to the smooth damp straggling line of golden hair and skin on Mello's temple.

"At least classes are done for the day," Mello said, and paused, looked at Matt with a certain considering, calculating look in his eyes that made his heart leap. "Want to sneak out of the House and try to catch a movie downtown? Or go to the arcade?"

"Don't you have homework?"

"I always have homework," Mello said. "I'm going crazy sitting locked up inside. Come on, usually it's you convincing me to take a break." He reached over and tugged on Matt's wrist.

"What about supper?"

"We have money," Mello said. "What's your problem? Don't you want to do something different for once?"

"It's going to rain," Matt said, pointing to the gathering clouds on the horizon, and Mello rolled his eyes.

"You're such a grandma, Matt. I happen to love the rain. We'll just walk back in the rain. So what?"

Matt bit his lip again and tried not to see Mello soaking wet, his black t-shirt clinging to his lean body, hair plastered to his cheeks, face wet and wild, eyes sparking, black shorts clinging to every curve of his buttocks and legs. Failed. "It's only water, I guess," he managed.

"Exactly. So are you coming with me or not?"

Matt stared at his feet.

Mello made a sound that was half-sigh, half-almost-chuckle, and rested his hands on Matt's shoulders. Matt tensed under their warmth, long slender fingers curling into his flesh and soul. "Come on, Matt," he said. "It'll be fun. You know you want to. Come with me."

_You want to. You want to be free in the world with me, needing no one and nothing else, wanting no one and nothing else. You know you want to follow me. You know you will follow me._

Matt shivered. Mello's eyes were two lazy slits of sky, watching him.

"Yes," he said.

-


	30. give you a mix tape to give you a clue

_Mix Tape - Avenue Q_

Notes: Yeah. I went there. (Sigh). On a side note, the lyrics I quote are from Sarah McLachlan's album _Afterglow_, from her song _Answer._ She's one of the artists that you can listen to on certain fandom kicks and go "... Wow, she 'ships this pairing too? o.0" Usually she's my girl for anything CLAMP, but sometimes, like now, I get a pleasant surprise like this.

-

"Happy birthday," Matt said, and tossed the little rectangular box at his head.

Mello caught it reflexively, and Matt grinned and then wandered out of the common room. He was so damn weird sometimes, Mello decided, and turned the box over in his hands, wondering what the heck it was.

It was a tape, one of those recordable ones that you could buy in packets for cheap at the record store, sleeve blank, and Mello rolled his eyes and tossed it onto the couch beside him.

"You know, you have to actually listen to it," Matt said, poking his head back into the room.

"I thought it was blank," Mello said defensively, and stuck out his tongue at the younger boy the moment his back was turned. He was damned if he was going to give Matt the satisfaction of letting him know he'd taken his advice and actually looked at the... the mix tape that his friend had apparently made for him. What a weird idea. Nobody listened to mix tapes any more. It was all about the CDs and MP3s. For being Mr. Digital in everything else in his life, Matt was sure trapped back in the Stone Age.

So he went to his room and he locked the door behind him, and stuck the tape in his old sound system, kept the volume on low, and pulled out the folded up piece of paper that was the list of tracks.

Side A was a mix of some of both of their favourite songs, interspersed liberally with bright upbeat songs about friends, and Mello almost had to grin at Matt's quirky tastes and at his thoughtfulness. This wasn't bad at all. He could take the goofiness of songs like _That's What Friends Are For_ if they were interspersed with all his favourite metal and hard rock.

Side B was completely different, soft and slow, ethereally sad and comforting, and it made Mello pause. He knew Matt had cracked-out songs in his library like the theme from _Power Rangers_ and from old children's music, but he hadn't known that Matt had these other tastes, more serious and less head-banging.

The last song on Side B was completely out of place, something actually _called_ 'Mix Tape,' bright and goofy like the ones on Side A, and it was from a band or some group called Avenue Q. And when it started playing, he really started wondering what Matt had been smoking. Obviously not a band - it seemed to be from a musical of some kind. What the hell, he hadn't even known that Matt liked musicals. Apparently he hadn't known a lot about what Matt liked to listen to when he wasn't with Mello.

That was a strange sort of thought. Matt was his best friend. He knew more about Matt than anyone, he was sure. And somehow, he hadn't even known something as simple as this.

What a weird gift. Strangely illuminating, but weird all the same.

"So?" Matt said at supper. "You listen to it?"

"Listen to what?" Mello said absently. "Oh, you mean the tape. Yeah. Looked at it."

"And?" There was a certain trepidation in Matt's voice that he didn't entirely understand, but Mello just shrugged in response.

"'S pretty good," Mello said noncommittally. "Hey, I didn't even know you listened to half that stuff."

"You'd be surprised at some of the things I have hidden away," Matt agreed.

It was only later that night, playing over some of the songs at random, that it started to click. Side B was better to fall asleep to than any of his normal stuff, and he lay there in the dark, listening to one quiet, pure voice filling the darkness.

He drifted. Definitely better to sleep to.

_'Cause I can only tell you what I know... that I need you in my life.... And when the stars have all gone out you'll still be burning so bright..._

Mello's eyes slid closed. Matt was so weird, but some of his taste wasn't actually that bad... at all...

Fighting back sleep, his mind sunk itself into the lyrics as an attempt to stay awake; in that half-conscious state, every little sound, every little drop of notes on the piano took on a whole new significance, a light that glittered in the darkness of his mind.

He woke up, startled, as the tape came to an end with the last few lines of _Mix Tape,_ and in his disoriented state he wasn't entirely sure whether the thought was uttered by that silly little 'Kate' in the song or by his own brain.

It sat in his head for about ten full minutes before the significance of it sunk in completely.

"...Holy _shit,_" he said, sitting bolt upright.

It wasn't just random music on the tape that Matt had thought Mello would like. It was very carefully put together, crafted with awkward sincerity, and it was all falling into place now, and why hadn't he seen it immediately?

No wonder Matt had sounded so full of trepidation when he'd confronted Mello at supper. He'd assumed that Mello was smart enough to put it all together right away. God damn it! What the hell was he going to say to Matt about this?

Because it was clear to him now that Matt liked him, as someone more than just a friend.

Side A was them, the way they were, meaningful but with moments of uneasiness, and Side B was... was change, Mello decided, because he couldn't quite bring himself to think the words 'Matt's,' 'love', 'confession,' 'to,' and 'me' all in the same phrase. And he'd known Mello wouldn't know about the convention that "sometimes if someone has a crush on you/they'll give you a mix tape to give you a clue" - so he'd stuck it on as well to let him know that there was some deeper meaning there.

_Shit._

He didn't sleep well for the rest of that night.

"Morning!" Matt said cheerfully at breakfast the next day, smiling until he got a look at Mello's face, with dark circles under his eyes and general air of solemnity. "Geez, are you all right? You look like you didn't even sleep last night."

"Fine," Mello said, and sat down to eat his toast and cereal.

"Matt," he said, eventually, finishing his food. "That tape..."

He saw Matt tense a little. "What about it? Does it totally suck? Because I was a little apprehensive about just throwing some of that stuff on at a whim because I thought you'd like it, if you don't like it I can redo it -"

"It's fine," Mello said sharply. "It's _fine._ You don't need to touch it or go changing it." He scowled. He hated speaking in code. "The songs are so damn random," he said. "But they... they fit together, oddly enough. It's... new. And different. But I don't mind." He stood up abruptly. "I'm going to go do homework," he announced, and stomped away.

Matt watched him go, thoughtfully, and then, suddenly, his face lit up.

"Mello! Wait up!"

_-_

Afternote: And in case you were wondering, the last line of _Mix Tape_ is Kate Monster saying, "...He likes me~!"


	31. i put my trust in you

_Linkin Park - In The End_

Notes: For once, I have nothing to say, other than that the end is my favourite part. This is a common thread in a lot of the ones this time around, actually.

-

His stomach drops into his shoes when he opens the door to his room and finds Mello curled up in the fetal position on his bed, eyes bright red with the effort of holding back tears. Something is seriously wrong. Everything he'd been holding - books, bag, gameboy - drops out of his hands and hits the floor unceremoniously. He joins his friend on the bed, sitting cautiously beside him, too scared to touch him for fear he will explode.

"L's dead," Mello says, before he can ask. "I thought you should know."

And then Mello's fingers are clenched in his shirt, and he's curled up practically in his lap and shaking so hard that Matt doesn't know if he can stop, because L was the one person Mello respected - damn near worshipped, even though he's never seen him. Matt stops caring whether Mello will kill him for this; he wraps his arms tight around him, holds him wordlessly, stroking his hair, rocking him, and Matt's shirt is damp. Mello's crying.

Mello's _crying_. Matt is terrified.

"It didn't matter, everything he did, all his plans, everything, just _gone_, not enough, Kira, he killed him, it's not fair -"

Matt holds him and says nothing. He wouldn't know what to say even if he thought it would help in the first place. L is dead. Mello is crying. His world, too, has been knocked all askew, and he has nothing to say to make it better.

"I have to leave," he says at last, when he's finally calmed down enough to speak in complete sentences.

Matt cannot quite comprehend that, but it's Mello - he has to have some good reason for this sudden change in events. That's not important, though. "Not without me. You're not leaving without me." Matt feels the fear flaring in him, almost uncontrollable. Mello puts a hand over his mouth to shut him up, eyes dull and deadened, though it is obvious he is putting some effort into the smile. It just makes it look scary.

"No," Mello says. "It's better this way."

"It's not," Matt whispers through Mello's fingers, and Mello grips his shoulder tightly, eyes locked on his.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes," says Matt, still muffled.

"Then trust that I'll call for you, someday," Mello says, and when he drops the hand and kisses Matt full on the lips, it comes as such a surprise that he can't even react until Mello has gotten up and walked out the door. Which was probably Mello's plan all along, the little bastard.

He wishes he had kissed back.

-


	32. destiny

_Destiny - X/1999 OST_

Notes: Gosh I'm such a nerd. I love trivia. Admittedly I wasn't working on getting any really obscure facts for this one, though. Any otaku worth their salt probably knows better facts than these. Sorry guys.

-

When Mello told him that the case was based out of Japan, Matt showed interest for the first time in a long time, and began researching the country itself. It was annoying, Mello decided, as nice as it was to see Matt concerned about something other than his video games.

"Mello, did you know that the Japanese have a festival in the spring that celebrates the blooming of the cherry blossoms?"

"Mello, did you know that the _kamikaze_ means the divine wind and not only refers to an air technique in WWII but also to the fact that when the Mongols tried to invade under Genghis Khan a great wind blew up and destroyed their fleet?"

"Mello, did you know that cats are lucky in Japan?"

"Mello, did you know that there's a Japanese superstition that if you sneeze, it's because someone's talking about you?"

"Mello, did you know -?"

"I don't care," Mello snapped. It had taken almost a week of it, but he'd had enough and he was not afraid to show it. "Shut up. If we ever get our own chance to be involved with this case, knowing all the superstitions, history, and cultural values is _not_ going to be of much value to solving it at all. Just shut up, Matt."

Matt looked wounded, but he did shut up, and Mello reveled in the silence for another week, working hard on his schoolwork and catching up on the studying he could have been doing instead of listening to Matt babble on about Japan.

"Mello," said Matt one night about eight days later, having invaded Mello's room for the evening, in a very, very casual tone. "Do you know about the red string of fate?"

"What the fuck's that?" Mello said absently, not completely paying attention, flipping through his textbook.

"It's a fairly common belief in certain countries of the world," Matt said, still very casual. "Everyone has one, tied to their pinky finger, and the other end is attached to another person."

"Like soulmates, then," Mello said, just as absently. "OK. So?"

"So it's believed that given time, everyone will meet the person on the other end of their string someday. There's no way they can escape it; it's destiny. Isn't that neat?"

Mello stared at a paragraph about behavioural disorders for about five minutes without actually reading it. Destiny, strings crossing and tangling but never breaking, and if one had the will and the desire, one could follow it to the very end of it, and meet that other person somewhere in the middle. It was very... romantic, and Mello was disgusted to find the idea... aesthetically pleasing, and ringing true. What the hell was wrong with him? There was no such thing as destiny. It was for idiots and indecisive people who couldn't take responsibility for their own lives.

"... Matt," said Mello, coming out of his textbook entirely and glaring suspiciously at his friend, lying innocently across Mello's bed with his head hanging over the edge. "This fairly common belief in certain countries wouldn't happen to be something Japanese, would it?"

"Um," said Matt, sheepishly.

"For god's sake," Mello said, exasperated. "I told you to stop it."

"It's just interesting," Matt mumbled.

"Whatever." Mello went back to his textbook.

"It's such a different country from ours."

"Uh-huh."

Silence.

At length, Matt said, almost too quietly to be heard, "I wonder who's at the other end of our strings."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Psychology was more important than Matt's babbling, and he wasn't going to let anything more distract him.

-

Slouched in an alleyway (_five long years later)_, hand on his gun, Mello waited for the hacker they'd been pursuing for months to come out the back door of the dingy, abandoned apartment building. Hidden in the shadows, a single piece of chocolate melting on his tongue, Mello watched the door intently, and wondered what the surprisingly elusive man was like, and whether maybe he should have brought some back-up just in case he was tougher than they'd expected.

The door creaked open, and the contents of a punk thrift store moved out, dizzying and striped and -

(_redheaded with goggles)_

- holy fuck, familiar.

Mello stepped out of the shadows and into the hacker's path, and the hacker looked up in surprise. For a long moment, they just stared at each other in silence, taking in the other's presence, taking in the reality, the strangeness, of the situation, and finally Mello stepped forward.

He didn't know what possessed him to do it or what it even meant. Maybe it was just the fact that it was twinging a little. He raised one hand, only a little above his waist, fisted but for his pinky (_the tattooed one he never spoke of)_, sticking out, black-gloved but unmistakeable.

Matt stared at him for a few seconds longer before his face cracked into a wry but pleased smile. "Hi Mel. Good to see you again."

-

It was only months later, inside, at a different apartment building, in the gloom of night and under the glow of fluorescent streetlights, drunk on desperation and need, bodies twined as tightly as their ungloved hands, that Mello got it. Matt's left hand was in his right, and Mello lazily observed how well they fit together, and saw the same thin circle of red, like a knotted thread, tattooed onto Matt's ivory-pale finger, a mirror-image of his own (_the one he'd gotten one night, drunk, just after leaving Wammy's and posing as a much older boy, the one he'd never been able to explain or even look at until now)._

"_You,_" he said, and didn't know whether to laugh, or curse, or grip Matt's hand tighter in his own.

Matt looked at him gravely from under tousled bangs, and smiled, soft and strange. "You," he agreed, and brought their hands to his lips, kissed the red lines like scars, like destiny, and that was really all that needed to be said.

-


	33. to watch you to guide you

_Wherever You Will Go - The Calling_

Notes: I need to stop writing them meeting up again, but it's so hard not to because there's so many possibilities. I do apologize, guys.

Also, I FINALLY finished another bunch so I'm gifting you with a crapload of chapters all at once before I have to start thinking about going back to classes. Ugh. Enjoy.

-

It was a little warmer inside the bus shelter than it was outside, and here at least it was dry. The rain turned the streetlights into streaks of orange light falling to the street below. Matt shifted his feet inside his damp boots, listening to his phone ring, and ring, and he didn't know if he wanted the person on the other end to pick up or not. It was two in the morning; there was a good chance that the person wouldn't.

"H'lo?" The voice on the other end was muzzy with sleep, and Matt hesitated a moment too long at the sound of it, throat closing up.

"Hello?" the voice repeated, clearer now. "Who is this?"

"It's me," he said at last, and there was a long moment of silence as the person on the other end of the line processed this.

"Oh," the person said, finally.

"Yeah," Matt said.

"So what did you want?" Caution, and Matt couldn't blame him for that; he hadn't called in years. Matt hesitated a moment too long again, fighting the urge to say the first words that rose in his mind.

_Just to hear your voice again, Mello._ Such a _pansy_ thing to say, ridiculous and embarrassing; he didn't care that it was true, that just listening to Mello breathing on the other end of the line was settling out the turmoil in his mind and allowing the waters to clear. Mello would kill him if he said something like that.

"I've left the orphanage," he said instead.

"Why?" Mello said - not quite sneered. "You liked it there. I thought you'd be there forever. End up taking over Roger's job, or something."

"Fuck you, Mello," Matt said sharply. "I've left and I'm in New York."

A pause, barely noticeable if you didn't know what you were looking for. Matt had had long years of dealing with Mello and his bullshit, and he noticed. "Are you." Nonchalance. "Good for you."

"Mello, I know you're here," Matt said - blurted. And silence. "I'm not stupid. I'm standing half a block from your apartment building, for god's sake."

"Why are you here?" Mello's voice was cold. "I didn't ask for you to come after me, Matt. You should go back to England. I don't know why you bothered to call me."

And Matt lost it in the surge of hurt and anger, loss and betrayal, that came with those words. "Fuck you," he said again, viciously, and the worst part of it was that he could still feel himself breathing in sync with Mello. "Fuck you and fuck what you want. I'm here. I'm not going back. This is where I am now. You can't tell me what to do, Mello."

"Why did you call me, then?" Mello said, and Matt blurted out everything in a gush of words that told more than they should have. He slammed his hand into the Plexiglass of the shelter and didn't even feel it, his body was so numb to all sensation.

"Because I know you, Mello. I remember when you were a kid, and I remember every stupid thing you ever did, every harmful word you ever said, every time you hurt me. I remember every time you smiled at me like you were glad I was there. I remembered every single time you stood up and fought for me, every time you wiped away my tears, every time you forgot your dignity and just held me because we were both lonely little kids in a world too big and too indifferent for either of us to survive in alone. Because I missed you, goddammit. Because we're still those lonely little kids even if we're trying so hard to pretend that we're not. Because you're you, and I'm me, and you're the only other person in this god-forsaken shithole of a world who really knows anything about me at all."

"... Matt." Mello sounded more than a little bewildered.

"_What_, dammit?" Matt snapped.

"... If you wanted to join me, you only had to say so," Mello said quietly.

"_Fine._" Matt was still furious. "Fine. Mello, I want to help you. Are you happy now?"

"Make up your mind, Matt. Either you don't want me telling you what to do or you want to work as a team. You can't have both. Are you going to give up freedom or friendship, Matt? Hmm? Which one's going to make you happier?" Mello sounded as though he were taunting Matt, almost, but Matt knew that he was right, in spite of how he wished he was not.

He breathed, heard his breaths matching the rhythm of Mello's on the other end, imagined a heartbeat, beating steadily in time with his own, and when it came down to it, there wasn't a choice to be made at all. The hardest part of it all came in telling Mello what he wanted.

"I'll help you," he said, closing his eyes. _Because at least then I can see you again. Maybe touch you, once more. I'd give up a lot, just to feel your hand on my arm again._

_God I'm so pathetic._

"OK," Mello said, voice softer. "OK, if that's what you want. It's going to be dangerous, Matt. You have to stay alert. One wrong move could mean death."

"I know," Matt said. "I'm not stupid."

"You'd be better off never seeing me again."

"I know," Matt said again. "I don't care."

Silence, for a long, long moment, and then Mello's voice crackled over the line again. Something was different about it now, and Matt shivered, because he thought that Mello must know something now that he hadn't before. "I'll let you up, then," he told him. "Before you freeze your stupid ass off."

"Thank you," Matt said.

"Don't fucking thank me," Mello snapped. "It's your fucking funeral, Matt. Don't say I never warned you."

"I won't," Matt promised, and he wouldn't, because he'd gotten all he wanted.

_-_


	34. and i would walk five hundred miles

_500 Miles - The Proclaimers_

Notes: Lulz, cheesy fic for cheesy song. Mmm. Cheese.

Mello barely had time to register that the person at his door was long and lanky, with hair a shade of red he hadn't seen since Wammy's.

"My c-car broke down," he said, shivering under his oversized vest and shifting stripes, and Mello could only stare. Eyes hidden behind the lenses of tinted goggles, fogging in the heat rolling out of the house compared to the cold air around them. Mello thought vaguely that he should shut the door to keep the heat in, wondered which side of the door he'd placed him and the other on. "Had to w-walk... s-s-so c-cold -"

And then he was sinking down to his knees, legs shaking under baggy pants, and Mello didn't think when he lunged forward to catch him, and drag him in through the door. Shut it behind them, the other leaning heavily against him, barely conscious. He wasn't a lightweight any more. He had to weigh about as much as Mello did, but he managed to carry him far enough to dump him on the couch and cover him with a blanket. It wasn't hypothermia - his skin was a normal colour - so it should be safe just to pile the blankets on. So he did, and carefully removed his goggles so that when he came to properly, he wouldn't have uneven goggle marks on his face.

Then he went back to his work in front of the glowing computer screen, and tried to stop him from looking up every three minutes to make sure the guy was still breathing and still OK.

When he did finally wake up, Mello set aside the laptop and knelt beside him, watching. His eyes, free of the goggles, glinted like the sea on the horizon, and Mello sat quietly, waiting until he had focussed before saying, "Matt," to draw his attention.

Matt turned his head to look at him, and managed a smile. "So I did find you, Mel," he said. "You have no idea how much trouble you gave me."

"You imbecilic asshole," Mello informed him, which only made Matt smile wider. He didn't know whether he was chastising his friend's self-destructive penchant, his foolishness in thinking that tracking Mello down would do him any good, his reasons for thinking that taking a long walk in the freezing cold was a smart idea, or some combination of all three.

"Hey," Matt protested. "I tracked you all the way out to California, and I was there for a week before I figured out that you'd already left and turned around. I didn't ask to always be a thousand miles behind you."

"And I didn't ask you to come after me," Mello reminded him.

"But I did." Matt's eyes were too serious. "And I'm here now. If you ask me, everything I have is yours to use. I want to help you take out Kira. I don't want to be pushed away again."

"Selfish prick," Mello said, and looked away. His throat was dry. He couldn't say much more.

Matt chuckled.

"I missed you too."

_-_


	35. my love lies on him and cannot remove

_Annachie Gordon - Loreena McKennitt_

Notes: I like parallels. If you check out the lyrics, you can probably guess who I pictured in place of each character, although it's not necessary for reading the piece and might in fact make you (head/desk) more than necessary. I'm actually really pleased with how this one turned out.

-

_Dear Matt._

He didn't read much farther before deleting the email and blocking the sender from his account. Sighed, left his computer, went back to his video games. The light flickered eerily in the dark room. Except for the low volume on the TV, the place was silent. He kept his ears open for any sound coming from the bedroom, but there was nothing. Mello seemed to be asleep, pain wrapped securely up in drugs, and he was deeply grateful for it. He'd hardly slept since Matt had brought him back here from the hospital, scarred and broken. He'd hardly spoken. Hardly told Matt what he was planning to do.

_I have heard from my source within the SPK, with his connection to the NPA, that a raid was conducted on a certain building in Los Angeles and that a forced confrontation with Mello occurred before the building blew up. Knowing you were in the area, and having some concern for the outcome, I wondered if you knew whether Mello had survived the encounter._

On screen, bloody death ensued, and Matt sighed again, turned off the TV, and went out on the balcony, stopping only to sweep up cigarettes and lighter from the coffee table. The night air was cool; sounds of traffic disturbed the fluorescent night, and Matt extracted a cigarette from the pack, slipped it between his lips, lit up, and inhaled, trying to dispel the deep-seated feeling that he was trapped between a rock and a hard place.

_I know that if Mello is alive you are going to try to join him._

_Matt, you are going to die if you go with him. He will stop at nothing to win and you know that. I know you want to stop Kira. There are other ways, Matt, safer and more effective. You're still a Wammy's boy and too intelligent to risk everything for nothing. You should be working with the police. You should be working with Near. Do you not remember all the times you were hurt because of Mello while you were still in the House?_

He wondered if he needed to go out and refill Mello's prescription pain meds soon. He wondered how long it would be before Mello spoke to him again, for anything more than simple demands like _get me water_ or _open a fucking window, I'm burning up._ He wondered how long it would be before Mello forgave him for keeping him from dying a martyr.

He hadn't meant to. After all, Mello had been the one who'd called him.

_Matt._

_I know you're... here in L.A. _Rough, thick breathing, and Matt had cradled the phone to his face with increasingly numb fingers. _Give... it an hour or so. Then... I think you know where I need you to be._

He knew. He'd dropped his game the moment he'd seen the sky light up with billowing clouds of fire and smoke. He'd heard the explosion all the way down at his hotel room, and he'd known it was something big. He'd watched the blaze die down, wondered what had happened. It was only when his phone rang and the screen lit up with Mello's number that he'd realized who was responsible. Mello's voice, weak as it was, had brooked no interruptions, given Matt no time to ask questions, had sent him running as always.

He hadn't waited an hour. He'd torn off immediately. Mello sounded like he'd been injured. No way was Matt going to wait an hour before going after him. By then Mello could be dead, his body the only thing left for Matt to pick up.

It wasn't until much, much later that he'd realized that was probably the plan.

He'd had every intention to chew Mello out for leaving without a word, for being so _stupid_, for nearly getting killed, but the moment he'd seen Mello's blue, blue eyes crack open in his ruined face at the sound of his footsteps and look at him with something like disappointment, the moment Mello's hoarse, resigned voice had told him to use his fake ID, pretend they were brothers, and get him to a fucking hospital, all that had seeped away and dissipated into nothingness. All that could wait.

Mello's voice had a power with him that no one else's ever could, a spell that could not be disrupted by space and time.

_Dear Matt._

Too many people had tried and failed to break that spell. It wouldn't be broken, Matt knew, until he himself willed it to be. And he didn't have the heart to ever do it.

_Please consider returning to the SPK. Your skills can be most effectively used here. I need your help, since I cannot ever expect Mello's. You may stay in contact with him if you wish, but it is too dangerous for you to work directly with him. I know you want to take down Kira as much as we both do, but frankly Mello's path leads only to destruction. We all know that. You risk yourself severely, staying with him. Our security is the very highest and you will never have to worry about someone inopportunely tracking down your real name..._

He finished his cigarette and went back to his computer, fired up his email program and set about composing replies.

_Dear Roger. _

They meant well, he knew that. Roger had been the closest thing to a real father that he'd ever known, and as much as he might begrudge the children under his care for the trouble they caused him, Matt knew that Roger would do whatever he could to protect them. He didn't want his charges to die.

He'd let Mello go because he knew a losing battle when he saw one. He'd let Near go because Near had new responsibilities. He'd fought to keep Matt on English soil and away from the war with Kira, because Matt had no investments in it, not the way that the other two did, and if he didn't have to fight, Roger saw no reason why he should. Roger was wrong, but his intentions were good.

_Dear Near._

Near had never understood either. For him, the winning was what was important. Evidence; facts; tangible clues, things that could be quantified and used as tools and weapons. Everything boiled down to that. There was no room for anything else. Near had never understood Matt's irrational need to only do what was difficult and what he wanted to do, rather than what was difficult and right.

_I don't care about Kira._

He'd never done anything simply because it was the right thing according to the rest of the world. He'd only done things that were right for him. It was right to stay here, filling prescriptions, cleaning wounds, wiping away feverish sweat; it was right that he be here whenever blue, blue eyes opened to search for him, right that he be here to support that broken gaze when he needed him. And that was all there was to it.

_I care about Mello._

He was never going back.

-


	36. this exultation the sweet disintegration

_When I'm Up - Great Big Sea_

Notes: ... Um, yeah. Total pointless fluff. Matt being persistently horny. I'm still not sure whether to hit my head against a wall or be vaguely amused by this one, so I'll let you guys decide. Ahahaha...

-

"The water's great~" Matt sang out, sinking into the hot spring up to his chin. "Come on in, Mel."

"I don't want to," Mello said, sitting with knees drawn up on the edge of the pool, towel barely doing its duty for decency. Sweat was already beading on his skin from his proximity to the water.

"Come _on_, Mel, what's the point of coming all the way out to a traditional Japanese _onsen_ and booking our own pool so no one will stare at us and then not even getting in the water?" Matt slid over, rested his chin on the ledge beside Mello, glancing up through a damp fringe of hair. His eyes were sparkling and animated, for once, and Mello could see them clearly. The steam had forced him to remove his precious goggles.

"Public baths are disgusting," Mello said. "You don't know what people have done in here, Matt."

"The water comes from a hot _spring_," Matt said patiently. "It's not like we're soaking in filth. All the used water flows out of the _onsen _facility, down the hill, and into the river, establishing a unique heat-resistant ecology of biodiversity in the undisturbed pools and runoff streams."

"You have got to stop quoting that fucking guidebook, Matt. It's pissing me off."

Matt laughed, lifted one dripping hand and rested it on Mello's bare thigh. His touch there burned. Mello didn't think it was just the heat of the water. That made him even more determined not to join him. "You just don't want to get naked with me and take a bath together."

"Ass," snapped Mello, smacking his hand away, feeling his ears start to burn. "That's not it at all."

"Then get in the water," Matt said serenely, shaking his abused hand a little to ease the sting.

"Make me," Mello growled.

In retrospect, that was a bad thing to say.

Matt took him at his word and yanked him in. Mello, not having much in the way of body weight, was caught completely off-balance and went under immediately, bubbling furiously until Matt yanked him up. The moron was grinning at him. Somewhere under the water was Mello's towel, the one shield between them, and he really, really wanted to wipe that smile off of Matt's face right now, for daring to pull such a trick.

"I'll kill you," Mello informed Matt calmly, and Matt smiled, looped his arms companionably around Mello's neck.

"Sure you will," he said, and then he was leaning in, and _this_ was why Mello hadn't wanted to get in the water, because baths made Matt frisky, and he kissed far too convincingly.

High on the heat, Mello kissed back, and the world spun about them with the stifling heat and suffocating thrill of desire rising from his stomach.

It felt so damn good. He'd known this was a bad idea, but somehow he couldn't make himself stop, even with Matt trailing amorous hands up and down his sides, his back, perhaps because of that. This was patently unfair.

But he was barely holding on now, and of course he knew that that was why Matt had insisted they come here, to take a break from Kira, to have a chance at capturing Mello's attention in the most effective way he knew. Of course he knew, but he was damned if he could do anything about it.

"Want to be one of those people that does things other people don't want to know about in a public bath?"

"Please."

-


	37. oh my love please don't cry

_Bloody Valentine - Good Charlotte_

Notes: This is one of the few songs from this band that I still listen to, years after ignoring the fact that I still own their CDs. I think I love this piece a little. It was almost too easy to write.

-

Mello put up with the woman for as long as he could before personally arranging to have her picked up by the police in a body bag.

Matt wasn't in the apartment when he came back, so Mello had the time to strip out of his splattered clothes and change into a clean sweater and jeans. He threw the clothes he'd had on in the trash. The blood had dried on the leather; no amount of scrubbing was going to get it out, and anyways it was better if there was no evidence left.

He washed his hands and face in the sink; dried blood flaked off and swirled down the drain, staining the water pink, and he watched it flow away, and felt nothing. In the distance he could still hear the occasional yelp of sirens, but no one had seen him, and in the dark, the blood wouldn't have shown up on the dull black leather.

He went into the kitchen, rummaged a chocolate bar out of the cupboard, and snapped off a piece to melt on his tongue as he made himself a large pot of coffee. He wandered into the living room as it started to perk, chocolate tumbling over his tongue and down his throat, and shoved things aside until he found his cell phone buried under a mess of cables in front of the TV. Flipped it open, thumbed down through his short list of contacts, and pressed to call Matt's number. Held it to his ear, let it ring, and ring, and ring.

Finally Matt picked up. "Yeah?"

"Where are you?" he said.

"Just went out to pick up some more smokes. Need anything?"

"Are you on your way back?"

"Yeah."

"Get back here quickly. There's something important I need to tell you."

"OK?" Matt sounded a little bewildered. "Um, did something happen? Something to do with all the sirens I've been hearing since I left?"

"Yes."

"Right. I'll be there in five."

Mello hung up, and went back into the kitchen. The coffee was done perking. He poured himself a cup and wrapped cold fingers around it, stared blankly at the wall until he heard the door open, almost exactly five minutes later. Matt kicked off his boots in the entryway, slung his vest off his shoulders and allowed it to fall on the floor. Mello held the cup tighter, though the heat was mostly gone from it and he'd only had a few sips.

"Hey," Matt said, and came into the kitchen, leaned on the counter opposite to Mello. His cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and Mello looked away, stared into the depths of his coffee. "So what's the big deal?"

"Kit's dead," he said to his cup, calm and steady. "She was a danger to the Family and she was shot down in an alleyway a little while ago."

He saw Matt's cigarette hit the floor, heard his breathing break rhythm, shaky exhale, sharp, pained inhale, and closed his eyes.

"There wasn't anything I could do to prevent it," he said, and there hadn't been. He hadn't wanted to prevent it. She'd been a worthless whore as far as he was concerned and they were all better off without her. Matt was better off without her. She was dead and he'd washed the blood from his hands, and it was over. It was done. There was no going back.

"Tell me you're lying," Matt said, and his voice cracked.

"No," Mello said, still calm, still steady. "I was there. She's dead."

Hitch in breathing, and Mello finally looked up. Matt's head was bowed, goggles and hair hiding his expression from Mello's view, but it sounded as though he were crying. As though he was actually sorry that she was dead.

"Was it quick, at least?" Matt whispered, at last, sounding sick.

Four bullets, shot at measured intervals. The first to stop her from getting away. The second to stop her from defending herself. Third, because she wouldn't shut up. Fourth, to finish her off.

_Why are you doing this? __Why__? What did I ever do to you?_

"It was quick," Mello said, looking him directly in the eyes. "She didn't suffer."

_Because you weren't supposed to touch him. _

Matt turned away, trying so hard not to show that he was crying. Mello reached out to him. Crossed the kitchen, put his arms around him, and held him to him, trying to take his pain and make it his own, trying to take it away. The one thing that had almost stopped him from killing her was the thought of Matt's pain. Matt shouldn't have to hurt over someone like that, someone low and dirty, unworthy of his affections.

_You knew that. _

Not that Mello was under any illusions that he was somehow less low, less dirty, more worthy. He wasn't. If anything, he was less than she had been. But at least he knew he wasn't worthy. At least he didn't pretend he had the right to the affections of whomever he chose. He'd protected Matt, by shooting her. She would only have brought him pain. He'd seen her in the club, cozying up to other men. Best to make it quick and get it over with, out of the way, before he fell in love with her and she broke his heart.

_You weren't supposed to touch him and you slept with him. _

"You saw it happen." Matt spoke numbly, from within the circle of Mello's arms. He didn't try to pull away, but neither was he leaning into Mello's embrace. He didn't seem entirely aware that he was being held. "Who did it? Who shot her?"

_You broke the rules and you have to pay._

"I did," Mello said, and Matt twisted away, twisted away and hit him, hard, sent him staggering back into the opposite counter. The room swooped into blackness. Mello didn't let himself cry out. He'd expected this. He'd expected worse. He'd thought that Matt might try to shoot him. But it was better to be honest now than have it all come out later, backfire in his face.

"You bastard!"

Matt was almost screaming, wild and strange, and Mello wiped the blood off from under his nose, and stood up, face like a stone.

"Why'd you do it? You _lied_ to me. Why would you do that?"

"To spare you pain," Mello said, when it seemed that Matt was going to stop yelling long enough to allow him to answer.

_He's mine._

Matt stopped, swaying, and then he staggered forward, fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands. "Oh god," he said, numb again. "Oh god, Mello. So you took the gun... so the others wouldn't make her suffer, torture her... for _my_ sake?"

_No. I killed her so she wouldn't ever have a chance to hurt you or take you away from me._

"Yes."

After a long moment of deep, heaving breaths, Matt rose shakily to his feet again, shuffled forward, and folded himself into Mello's arms. Buried his face in Mello's shoulder, wrapped himself close around him. Mello closed the embrace, held him silently.

"I don't know why you'd do something like that, Mello." Matt's voice was barely audible, still deeply strained.

"Because I love you."

Matt jerked back in his embrace, looked at him, eyes wide, and Mello met his eyes calmly. "You're my best friend. I love you. I don't want you to hurt any more than you have to."

Matt's fingers trailed over Mello's cheek, expression unreadable, and Mello held still, feeling his touch ghost over hypersensitive skin, and he wondered if Matt understood, wondered if he would ever forgive him even knowing his most selfish justification.

-


	38. more to fear than strangers in the night

_Save You - Emilie Autumn_

Notes: I had this song languishing on my computer for ages before I rediscovered it and went, '... Wait, she fangirls for M&M too?' I love songs like that. This is perfect, from 'how do I look into the eyes I love and send them down this path? I know it isn't right' to 'I can't deny the past, it's written on my face.' Asdfhjkgagllk.

-

Mello came back to find Matt asleep, stretched out on the couch with a game controller half-hanging out of his left hand, which had fallen off the edge of the cushion beside his long lanky body and was almost on the floor. He'd drifted off with his goggles still on, the idiot; Mello sighed, and bent over his friend to carefully work them up and off his face, and onto the coffee table beside him. It was cold in the apartment. He flung a blanket over Matt, and stalked into the kitchen, feeling as though he were acting unbearably motherly. He made himself some coffee and returned to the living room, leaning against the side of the couch and watching his best friend sleep.

He should be angry, he reflected, that Matt was ignoring his duties for the mere human need of sleep. He should be furious that even after all these years and all this time, Matt still managed to make him feel in ways that no one else could.

Matt had been looking after him for a long time now, while Mello recovered from the explosion. Matt had spent a lot of sleepless nights wordlessly making sure that Mello's were as pain-free as possible and restful. He'd cooked - badly. He'd made an honest effort to clean, to keep Mello from tripping when he did get up, to keep the place where Mello was clean enough to avoid infection. Maybe Matt deserved a break, for now.

It didn't explain why his closed eyes, lids blue-white with their pallor, and relaxed mouth made Mello want to do kind little things for him like making sure he didn't wake up with goggle-marks, but then nothing ever had, and Mello was helpless to discover a reason why.

Things were going to be very dangerous now, since Mello was back in the game, and looking at Matt, so still, so much bloody younger than him and so... innocent (though that wasn't the right word for Matt at all and it had been years since Matt had been anything but cynical in regards to everything else in the world but for Mello), he knew he didn't want him involved. He couldn't ask Matt to do anything more than he had.

It was going to be a game of life and death from now on, even more than it had been before, and it was bad enough that he was gambling with his own life. If Matt stayed... If Matt stayed, Mello would end up using him, like all the others, like the mafia men who were now all dead, like the SPK. Matt wasn't a pawn, but Mello knew himself well enough to know that he couldn't stop himself from making him one. And that meant Matt would end up dead.

It was the subject of nightmares.

Yet it always came back to one thing, when he woke up, something that was both comfort and fear combined. Matt had been the one to track him down. Matt had been the one who had, very calmly, righted their friendship and set it back on its tracks despite Mello's long absence from his life. Matt had been the first one of them to say, _I need you in my life, and this is why_, as though it wasn't a big deal, just simple facts that could not be changed. Matt would always come back.

Making him leave - if he even could - would shatter their friendship's careful balance and break Matt's heart. Mello didn't think he had the strength to do it.

Because as much as he hated to admit it, he needed the boy who slept beside him on the couch as much as he needed Mello. He'd let Matt stay, all this time, let him maintain their personal status quo, let him track him down, let him come back and reinsert himself in Mello's life and felt himself the better for it.

Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. Mello closed his eyes, Matt's gentle breathing filling the room, and tried to hold back the bitterness, tried to shore up the floodgates once more. How could he protect someone he couldn't bear to keep away from him, even though he was the problem? If Matt was so cynical, why did he always fail to see how dangerous it was to be with Mello, how dark and twisted Mello had become - thief, manipulator, kidnapper, murderer - and why did he never understand that being with Mello would sully him, would drag him down into the gutter too and hold him there until death? How could he make sure Matt would be safe when Matt was happiest only next to the person who was the worst for him?

He wasn't good enough to save even one important life. Mello's fingers trailed unconsciously over his still tender scarring skin, his mark of shame and inadequacy, and wished there was even one way that he could tear them apart without killing them both.

_-_


	39. do i really feel the way i feel

_Walking in Memphis - Bruce Springsteen cover_

Notes: Hurray for airports and delayed flights. The thing about detained grandmothers is troo fax. Mello and schadenfreude go together like... things that go well together. And gosh, I do enjoy playing with UST.

-

It was raining hard when they landed, heavy, grey and chill, and Matt had to shake Mello awake to hear the captain announcing, "Sorry for the delay, folks. The weather's too bad to continue farther west today. Please relax in the terminal and we'll keep you posted on when we can be on our way again."

"Fuck's sake," muttered Mello. When he stood and stretched, shirt riding up over his smooth stomach, half the plane stopped what they were doing to look. Matt didn't know whether he wanted to roll his eyes in long-suffering allowance or glare at them all until each one looked away, so he kept his face a featureless mask and handed Mello his coat when he was asked to.

They disembarked side by side onto the slick concrete of the runway, and were soaked almost immediately. Water ran down Matt's face, over his goggles, obscuring his vision to the point where he was having trouble reading the numbers. Mello had to nudge him towards the right terminal.

The waiting room was dingy and grey in this light, and Mello sank into a chair, back curved in a sulk, as Matt wiped his goggles. The small-screen pay-and-watch TV nearest them was being watched intently by an older black woman deeply absorbed in the soulful gospel harmonies of a colourful choir, and Matt wondered briefly if it was that which seemed to be offending Mello's sensibilities or something else. There was a mother with a crying baby a few seats over; the child wasn't loud, just hiccupping and snuffling by this point, but with a quiver to its sounds as though it could burst out screaming again at any moment.

"We're going to be late," Mello said, arms crossed protectively across his chest, long legs sticking out deliberately into the aisle.

"I wasn't aware we had an appointment," Matt said.

"Shut up, Matt." Mello grumbled and sunk deeper into his chair.

"It's going to be hours before this lets up enough to be on our way, lads," said a curly-headed older man across from them, voice thick with accent. "You might as well get yourselves a bit of rest before then, there's not much else you can do."

"That's a good idea, thanks," Matt said.

"I'm not sleeping," Mello said stubbornly, reached for his carry-on, which had his computer in it. He set it up on his knees and started typing furiously.

"What are you doing?" Matt glanced at his friend. "You're not going to be able to pick up WiFi here so close to the planes."

"Things you'd know about if you paid more attention to your job," Mello said, and Matt blew out an exasperated breath of air. Settled back in his seat and closed his eyes, listening to the murmur and whine of tired voices around him, the rain hitting the glass in continuous tribal rhythm. Mello's fingers on the keyboard were like the rain.

Maybe the rain would never stop. Maybe they would stop in this terminal forever, walk the city with their clothes sopping wet and clinging to their bodies, shivering but content, walking slowly because they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. Rain felt like redemption on his skin. They could both use some of that.

"Matt, wake up."

The next thing he knew, he was being shaken, and opened his eyes to find Mello glaring at him.

"I'm hungry," he said.

"So get some food," he said drowsily, and let his eyes fall shut again.

He was shaken upright again, and this time his eyes stayed open. "Can't," Mello said, gesturing to the computer. "I'm in the middle of something. Go get me something?"

"Sure, sure, whatever," Matt said, and pushed himself to his feet. Mello had the extraordinary ability to phrase questions as orders, and orders as questions, so that Matt never knew precisely whether he had the choice to say 'yes' or 'no' to it, or not. He was pretty sure that this one wasn't an option. Checked his watch. It was ten o'clock at night, which might explain why Matt, too, was beginning to feel more than a little hungry.

He trudged off down the hall, wondering why exactly he always gave in so easily to whatever Mello demanded of him, then forgot about it as his stomach growled. He remembered being through here before. There had been a place that sold sandwiches outside of the secure area that was supposed to be open all night; but it was outside the secure area, and that was almost enough to turn him away. Going through security was always nerve-wracking for Matt; he always had the feeling that he was being stripped naked for everyone to see, and if he'd thought it wasn't easy to do in front of strangers, as the security guards patted him down and frisked him with the metal detector, it was even worse when Mello was standing there and watching with the beginnings of a grin twisting across his face.

He walked out, and down the length of the airport, looking for something that looked appetizing, and open, or at the very least somewhere that sold half-decent coffee. He had the feeling that Mello would want some, if he planned to work all night as he seemed to be doing.

He had to put the food on the conveyor belt as he was passed through the metal detector once more; when the studs on his belt and the buckles on his boots went off again, Matt sighed, gritted his teeth, and let them frisk him again.

"Sir, what is that?"

"My belt," Matt said resignedly, and pulled it loose. His pants sagged a little further on his hips as he tossed it onto the conveyor belt as well.

"And these?"

"Boot buckles," Matt said, and kicked them off as well, standing barefoot in front of the metal detector's arch as patiently as he could.

The man made another pass, turning up the sensitivity of the wand. It beeped at Matt's crotch.

"Sir, what is that?"

"My zipper," Matt sighed, and moved to go through. He was stopped by an outstretched hand and a wand.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to remove that, just to be sure."

"The zipper is attached to my _pants_," Matt reminded the man, feeling the first stirrings of mortified panic.

"For safety's sake, sir. Please cooperate."

"I am _not_ taking off my pants!"

"We have to make sure," the man said stubbornly. "Please remove the article in question. If you have nothing to hide, this will be over very quickly and you may put them back on."

People were turning to look as Matt stood there in his underwear, jaw clenched, being frisked for the third time by airport security. Of course this had to happen late at night, when the really suspicious people (like the fragile old women who stood by indignant as security went through their suitcases) were no longer travelling. Young, scruffy, Matt knew he looked like a bit of a punk, but this was ridiculous. He prayed it would be over soon and that he wouldn't be asked to remove any more pieces of clothing.

"Matt, what the hell took you so -?"

Matt cringed, hearing Mello's strident voice, and tried to shrink down into the floor and obscurity.

"There's sandwiches and coffee in the tray," he said, bravely, tilting his head towards the end of the conveyor belt. "Sorry, it kinda got a little x-rayed."

Mello stared at him. Matt tried to keep his back straight and relaxed, as though this didn't bother him in the slightest.

The wand beeped again, and Matt wanted to die.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to remove your vest."

Mello's laugh was a loud peal of almost malicious delight at Matt's misfortune.

It figured that the one time he compared being frisked to being stripped naked in front of a crowd, both would end up happening to him just to prove how different one was from the other. Matt's face burned as he all but threw his vest to the security guard. He couldn't look at Mello. There were other people around, he knew, staring just as much, but when Mello's eyes were on him, his was the only gaze that mattered. God, this was mortifying.

Mello sipped his coffee, leaning against the wall, as Matt yanked his pants back on once he was finally allowed to escape.

"It's a little cold," he said, holding out his cup. "Go find a microwave and warm it up."

"Fuck you, Mello," Matt spat, jerking his belt through the loops, and Mello's mouth twitched into a smirk.

"Chill, Matt, I'm just playing with you." He paused, tilted his head consideringly at Matt, then added off-handedly: "You know, you have pretty nice legs. For a guy."

"Yeah? Still fuck you," Matt said, feeling his face start to burn again, stomach roiling with odd sensations, and stalked off before Mello could notice.

"You forgot your sandwich and coffee," Mello called after him, but Matt kept going until he'd reached the lounge and could slouch into his seat again and lose himself in the tiny virtual world of his gameboy, forget his embarrassment.

Arms reached around him and placed the sandwich on his lap, reached across and pried his fingers off of his gameboy to force them to wrap around the paper cup of now admittedly lukewarm coffee.

Mello was apparently in a much better mood with some food and caffeine in his system. His arms retracted to rest on Matt's shoulders, thumbs absently circling on the sorest muscles there, and in spite of himself Matt felt his resentment melting away with the tension in his back.

The coffee still tasted all right, even as it grew cooler, and the sandwich soothed the raging, gnawing sensation in his stomach. He blew out a breath when he was finished, and felt a puff of Mello's breath brush the top of his head.

"We'll be out of here soon," he said. "The clouds are breaking. If the lights weren't so bright, you could see the stars."

It was nice, when Mello was so nice to him. Maybe that was why Matt reached up impulsively and laid his hand over Mello's on his shoulder. He wasn't really sure. His skin was warm under Matt's palm. Somewhere along the line he'd taken off his gloves and Matt hadn't noticed until just now. His hand shifted, and Mello's thumbs stilled in their pressing, circling motion.

"That's good," Matt said. "About time."

Mello's hands remained in position for a moment longer before batting Matt's hand away and lifting off his shoulders. He felt Mello straighten, and walk away, around the row of chairs. He sat in his former spot beside Matt and stretched out again.

"When we get there -" he said, and stopped himself. Any number of things could fit into that blank, and Matt knew them all, knew that Mello meant them all. _We'll be too busy to sit and play games. We'll have to get moving right away to make up for this delay. You can't slack off any more. Things will be better._

"Yeah," Matt said, and tried to bury himself back in his game, and not notice how Mello's thigh pressed itself against his knee, warm and unconsciously. Glanced over. Mello's hands were laced behind his head and his eyes were closed. Matt wanted to brush the hair out of his eyes, but the slightest motion on his part would wake Mello up, and Mello had hardly slept the past few days. He held himself still as stone, and played his game, and took three tries to pass the level because his mind kept slipping sideways to the person sleeping beside him, leg brushing his.

_When we get there, everything will be different,_ Matt thought, and maybe these thoughts and feelings would disappear with the rising sun, and maybe they wouldn't.

-


	40. and who can say why your heart dies

_Enya - Only Time_

Notes: I'm only beginning to realize that this series could be more like a 100 Kisses thing than anything else, but I refuse to conform to expectations.

-

He wakes up to the feeling that someone is staring at him, and rolls over blearily to discover Mello on the floor beside his pillow, hands resting on the edge of his bed and blue eyes focussed sharply on his face. "What the hell," he mumbles, glancing at the clock. "It's three in the morning. What do you want."

Mello says nothing, just looks at him, and Matt's awake enough now to see something flickering behind the arrogant near-insanity and stubborn pride. If it were anyone else, he might call it fear; but this is Mello, for crying out loud, and Mello's never scared.

He used to be, though, when he was a kid. So because it's Mello, because of that and because Matt really wants to be unconscious again, he just says, "Can't sleep?" and rolls to the far side of the bed to make room for him. Mello's under the covers beside him almost before Matt's out of the way, wriggling close, his breathing unsteady beside Matt's ear. They're a tangle of limbs, and Matt carefully extricates himself so he can drape an arm across his friend's body.

"We used to do this all the time," Matt says softly. "Remember?"

"Yeah." Mello's voice is rough. "Shut up and go to sleep."

"Nightmare?" he asks, yawning, not really expecting an answer. Mello never gives answers, not now, and not then, when they were kids and had something like real trust.

"Matt," he says, and Matt's jolted back into full wakefulness by surprise. "We're different now, aren't we. We used to be all right. Not perfect or happy - just all right. It was good, though - you know? Back then, in spite of it all?"

"I know," Matt says. Mello seems to be winding up to say something important, so he keeps quiet. It's been a long time since he's been taken into Mello's confidence.

"What happened to make us like this?" Mello says, in a voice so low that Matt has to strain to hear him. "Nothing's all right any more, is it, Matt? Nothing's going to be all right ever again."

Matt says nothing, but he lets the arm draped over Mello curl to drag him closer.

"I don't think either of us expected to be here back then," he whispers, and for a split-second he looks lost and small and scared, and Matt is stunned by this, by this sudden evidence of Mello's humanity.

Finally, he says again, lamely, "So, was it a nightmare...?"

Mello's smile is grim. "Neither of us are waking up," he says. "I'm tired, Matt. I'm really tired." He closes his eyes. He looks like an angel like this, half-asleep, and it belies his next words. "Matt. If you say anything about this to me or anyone ever again, I'll kill you."

"I won't," Matt promises, and because he's tired, because it's Mello and he's scared, he does something he's never dared before, and kisses Mello softly on the forehead. Mello's mouth quirks into something like a smile. He sighs, relaxes, and presses in until Matt has a mouthful of his hair, but that's OK, because Mello is pressed full-length against him, all wiry muscle, soft skin, and comfortably angular limbs, and Matt thinks that even Time can't make everything go bad.

-


	41. the night the world begins again

_Better Days - Goo Goo Dolls_

Notes: ... I don't really have a comment for this one.

-

It was three in the morning - technically already the twenty-sixth - when Matt was shaken awake roughly.

"What the fuck," he mumbled, rolling over and glancing blearily at the clock. "Mel, you have got to stop doing this."

"We're going to die today," Mello said, and Matt sat up, blinking, startled into wakefulness.

"What."

It wasn't that he hadn't known. They'd been over it, after all, over and over again, all the while carefully avoiding the subject, though it was clear enough by the way that Mello's plan ended shortly after the actual kidnapping. There was no real intent to get away with this. Mello always planned for every eventuality. Matt had accepted the knowledge with calm. What the hell - he didn't have anything better to do, and he didn't mind the idea of going out thumbing his nose at what passed for authority these days. And it was for Mello's sake; that was important, too. If he was going to die, it was good to know it would be for Mello's sake. It made the whole thing seem almost worthwhile.

"And if we don't?" Matt looked into the shadowy silhouette that was Mello's face, trying to find his eyes.

"Do you really think we won't, Matt?" A low, strained chuckle, rising at the end into a note of something almost like hysteria.

"But if we don't?" he persisted, and didn't answer the question. He didn't believe they'd live to see another three in the morning, but Mello was scaring him, and if they crumbled now, everything would fall to pieces; the plan Near had unwillingly agreed to - that Mello had _forced _him to agree to, at gunpoint - would fail and they would die for nothing.

"If we don't," Mello said, and laughed hollowly once more. "I'll buy you all the fucking video games you want. Anything you want - fuck, you can have it, if we live, I'll spend the money, it won't matter, if we beat Kira and live to tell the tale."

"I don't give a damn about _things_, Mel," Matt said quietly, and reached out a hand, found Mello's arm in the dark, and held on, bare skin smooth under his hand, chilled from being exposed to the night air, but still warm underneath. It was a special sensation, a uniquely corporal and sensate one, something that Matt was suddenly afraid he would never feel again. "Anything you can think of - I don't want it. Just living, being alive... that's all that really matters, doesn't it? To taste chocolate or a cigarette again, to savour it as though it's your last, but knowing that it isn't. Wouldn't that be good enough?"

"Probably," said Mello, and Matt heard his voice crack. That was all the warning he got before Mello was pushing him down on the bed and kissing him.

He hadn't expected that.

Mello hadn't kissed him in ages, since they were little kids and awkwardly curious about why grown-ups did such things, too embarrassed to try it on a girl, trusting only in each other. It was surprisingly soft, almost what Matt might be tempted to call tender. Mello's mouth tasted of bitter chocolate and aching despair and Matt's body was a helpless puddle under him as he wondered what was going on.

"Mello," he said when Mello pulled back with a little unhappy noise. "Mello, what are you doing?"

"You wanted to live," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Mello," he said, and stopped, because it was the truth, but not a truth that mattered in the end. "You don't need to apologize," Matt said at last. "I wouldn't have followed you this far if I cared about that sort of thing."

He tasted salt when Mello kissed him again, and that scared him as much as Mello's strange attitude, as much as the thought of this being the last time he would ever taste Mello. "What are you doing?" he repeated quietly when Mello broke the kiss.

"I can't promise you a life after today," he said. "I'd like to tell you that Kira will go down, and we'll find a place to exist without Near, without the SPK. Somewhere to forget this shit, this mess of a world that's been left to us, and just live."

"You don't have to," Matt said, and lifted his arms to pull Mello down and against him. "It's OK, Mel. It really is."

"It isn't," Mello insisted, body almost feverish with anxious heat, all long slender bones and muscles shifting against him. "Even if you can't see that." Deep kiss.

"... Mello, having sex with me isn't going to work, or even accomplish anything useful," he said finally, even though he did love Mello. In another time, in another place... he would have wanted this, he would have worked up the courage to say yes, but last chance or not, he had never wanted it to be only because they might die tomorrow.

"I know _that_," Mello said, and his voice was wistful and scornful both at once, and Matt had to wonder. "I know. I just... Can't I leave you with this? Something good, to take with you into the dark?"

"I guess you can," Matt agreed, and this time when Mello lowered his lips to Matt's once more, Matt kissed back.

-


	42. and i'm alone now me and all I stood for

_Your Star - Evanescence_

Notes: A little weird. I was experimenting with different ways of writing dream sequences and this was one of the things that resulted. Once again the image of the church burning against the sunset makes its appearance.

With this chapter, I believe I have finally beaten this horse to death. For now, I will say it's fairly safe to say you will not see any more chapters to this particular fic (although I'm still working on others that I hope, one day, to post). I hope you've enjoyed the ride. Now have some depressing endfic.

-

Sometimes he dreamt.

_- burning burning everything burning _

_the cross flames gouts of orange light up a bilious sky everything burning crumbling dying ending flesh bubbling baking blackened skin curling into ruin flames hitting the gas tank everything dissolving in explosion of red heat_

_white light it hurts even shaded orange concrete solid beneath feet last thing remember black holes of terror in endless unbroken circle staring into soul uncomprehending masks watching as pain happens piercing flesh shattering bone_

_heart_

_stops_

_the cross breaking wheeling tumbling flaming to barren earth -_

-

He'd let Matt kiss him before he left. Because.

"Don't do anything stupid," Mello told him.

"I'll try not to," Matt said, smiling, and sauntered out the door.

"Matt," said Mello, feeling ridiculous and ashamed and childishly sappy, but needing to try. Matt stopped in the dusty hallway, listening. "Matt, I'm -" He couldn't do it.

"I know," Matt said, turned, flashed one last look with unveiled blue-green eyes before shoving his goggles down and disappearing down the stairs.

Matt's definition of not doing anything stupid, it seemed, had more to do with not trying to outlive an important person who was sure to die than taking care of himself. The circle of guns and the bright painful lights, the mouths opening into emptiness, brilliant shards of fire and brass breaking bone, had been reality. Mello could tell that from the glimpse of the body the cameras had shown before panning away to the bullet holes speckling the hood and doors of the car. _I did love you, Matt, after all_, he thought, and gritted his teeth so hard it hurt, choosing to sail towards death with hate in his eyes rather than tears.

He drove, concentrating on the road, remembering the church just off the highway, in the trees a little ways out from even the farthest suburbs of Nagano, a ruined old Christian church with a cross piercing the sky above. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mello thought, but he'd known that when he'd chosen the place, how that cross would look, burning orange against the bilious sky. Matt was dead, Takada had a page of the Death Note, as he'd suspected, and neither Kira nor the one doing the judgments would dare leave her alive. And Kira knew his name.

They would make it look as though he'd killed her, but the only way to do that was with fire. Because she knew his face, the only person besides Matt to know both his face and his real name, she would kill him, put him out of the way for Kira. He'd known that would happen; he would die first, and then both Kira and his judge would destroy all evidence, thinking the other unable to move, and thus reveal the real Death Note before its time, allowing it to be replaced.

He was ready for the pain; he accepted it as he'd accepted both immolation and cremation. He'd finally accepted that if he couldn't be the best, at least he could do what no one else could, and make a martyr of himself, indispensable to the final solution, the final trick, where justice, for L and for the world, would be done.

His world would crash and burn, cleansing and purifying.

And maybe because of this everything would be all right again.

_Sometimes it was too late to stop the future from happening. It already had._

_-_


End file.
